5 Reasons VAR Is Ruining Football
2. It Is Slow
When Frank Lampard famously scored against Manuel Neuer in the 2010 World Cup, the world gasped, not for the merit of the goal, but because the goal wasn’t given. Thankfully, the cries of injustice didn’t fall on deaf ears. Along came goal-line technology: a system whereby the referee is notified instantaneously by a sensor if the ball crossed the line. It has since proven flawless (unless you're a Sheff Utd fan...).
Unfortunately, VAR hasn’t turned out this way. If you received a dollar for every minute in every game that has been wasted waiting around for the referee to come to a decision, deliberating as he watches the replay in slow motion countless times, you’d be richer than Jeff Bezos. This sluggishness completely kills the flow of the game.
Indeed, VAR is not a correction, but a long pause and a rewind, done for tedious things like a few millimetres worth of an offside call. Imagine having it in your life - it would be like restarting your day if you’d added too much milk to your morning coffee! You could never just get on with your life. Football is becoming Groundhog Day, doomed to never move on if it does not play ‘perfectly’ by the rules. But football isn’t supposed to be perfect - it is a Messi sport (ahem), and this unpredictability is what makes it so exciting.
The sooner we realise all this and fall in love with spontaneity again, the sooner we will break the spell and wake up from this nightmare.