Has VAR become a scapegoat?

The Video Assistant Referee system, or VAR, was introduced as a means to making the beautiful game fairer and giving officials the opportunity to correct bad decisions that could change games. The excitement around its debut in English top flight football, however, has been replaced with almost unanimous displeasure.

Every week, it seems, there is a contentious decision that leads to more calls for the technology to be scrapped. These calls initially came from the more uninitiated football supporters, but several bad decisions have led to many within the game- pundits, coaches and even players- speaking against the system.

What was supposed to make the beautiful game fairer has instead made it worse in the eyes of the majority, but is the technology itself truly to blame? To answer this question, we may need to look at what VAR really is.

Too many seem to view VAR as a benevolent algorithm that should be without fault. The reality of the situation is that VAR is an additional assistant referee who reviews the decisions made by the on-field referee with the benefit of replays and different angles.

The goal is to minimise human error, but completely erasing it is impossible. When it comes down to it, the people making the decisions are still human referees.

For this reason, the on-field referee is encouraged to look at the monitor for any debatable decisions so that using the extra footage he can come to a decision himself.

Knowing this, there should be no reason to hate the system itself. Many decisions poor decisions and blatant offsides have been rectified by VAR, but there are still too many controversial calls being made.

However, these calls aren’t being made by an algorithm, they’re being made by people. VAR offers the additional angles and replays, but the decision still has to be made by a human. So, is it fair that this system that is ideal in principle receives blame, while the individuals operating it do not? If someone runs a red light, is the car to blame or is the driver?

VAR has become a scapegoat that equites the referees of almost all blame when poor decisions are made. When a game is decided by a controversial call, the talk on Twitter in the aftermath is of how VAR has ruined the game, but the different people in charge of operating it and making those decisions has not once been called into question.

People like to have one thing to project their frustration onto, but VAR’s introduction has taken the attention off of the steady decline of standards in English top-flight refereeing. If a decision is made to scrap the system, all this anger will be redirected at the referees making the calls once again and the human error that was minimised will rise once again. The frustrations of the football community are valid, but they might just be misplaced.

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