5 Reasons VAR Is Ruining Football

In some legal systems, there is the concept of a statute of limitations: the idea that you cannot be prosecuted for a crime once a certain period of time has passed. Incidentally, you would think that when the referee makes a decision and play is allowed to continue for several minutes, that the game wouldn’t then be allowed to stop in order to reverse that earlier decision. As football enthusiasts will testify, VAR knows no such boundaries.

It is for this reason that both players and fans can never be sure of anything. If your team scores a last-minute winner, how can you celebrate knowing that at any point in the game, that could be reversed? If a defender on your team makes a life-saving tackle to prevent conceding a goal, how can you be sure that the referee won’t later pull it back for a penalty?

You may think that in the majority of cases, you can be sure that no rules have been broken and therefore be free from any paranoia. But how? We, players/fans, don’t see everything like the VAR officials do. Given this, even if you’re confident, you can never be 100% sure that nothing happened somewhere on the pitch that could dash your hopes at any point in the game.

VAR wasn’t designed to be used in every single decision, but every week, its reach over football becomes ever more terrifying. With such paranoia plaguing our minds, how can we enjoy the game we all love?