Why VAR is the worst thing that has been inflicted on football

I'm going studs up on VAR – bear with me. Plus, what do we mean by "best-run club"?

You have to be careful when you argue against anything new, especially any technology that’s new. Because it’s very easy to come across as just being resistant to change. But I’m going to try here to make a convincing argument for why VAR is not only a bad idea, but possibly the worst idea ever introduced in football, and an idea that symbolises pretty much everything that is wrong with the modern game.

Maybe it is wise to start by admitting my own culpability. I’ve been critical over the years of the poor officiating decisions, inconsistencies and downright errors that have cost my team. And yes, there’s been shouting. Every fan can pick a moment when a bad decision cost their team dear. The one that stands out the most for me is the infamous Pedro Mendes Goal That Never Was for Spurs at Old Trafford in 2005.

Every fan has a story like that, and it was the buildup of collective discontent at the level of error and plain bad decisions that led, in part, to the introduction of VAR. But, let’s be honest. VAR was not introduced to make things better for fans. And particularly not for matchgoing fans. VAR was introduced because TV companies wanted content, and TV companies bought football years ago.

For years before VAR was introduced to the Premier League in 2019/20 we were subjected to the constant drip drip of lobbying. Behold the wonder of our technologies, said the TV companies, for they can eliminate error and doubt. It was, we were encouraged to think, backwardness of the worst kind to doubt the benefits that using cameras and sophisticated technology could bring to the beautiful game.

Of course, it was the ubiquitous presence of cameras that had helped create the problem that now needed to be solved. Not a ball was kicked at professional level in the men’s game without it being filmed, and in turn analysed endlessly. This created great, sticky, content as incidents could be replayed endlessly while multiple layers of opinion were overlayed.

Happily for the TV companies, the content being created was creating the demand for more content. This was because it was clear to us all after having seen an incident 26 times from 17 different angles in ultra-slow motion, that the stupid refs were totally incapable of getting every decision right by seeing things once in real time.

What was needed, it seemed, was video assisted refereeing. And the delightful advantage of this was that its introduction would further cement TV in place as the most central, indispensable element of modern football.

The Premier League’s website has a section on the history of VAR, and it explains the rationale behind its introduction in that competition. “Premier League match officials can make mistakes and those mistakes can have an impact on the outcome of a match. Because technology lets people see immediately on TV or on their phones that mistakes have been made, why not use that technology to help what is happening on the pitch?”

The soothing, borderline patronising explanation of why we really must accept some help to eliminate mistakes having an “impact” on the outcome of games forgets the simple truth that sport is fascinating because of its imperfections, because of its lack of certainty. Perfection is pursued, and when it is touched it is truly wonderful to behold. But perfection is not a permanent state. If it was it wouldn’t be special  – just as ice cream every day would cease to be a treat.

Mistakes have been at the heart of the greatest of football dramas. The wrong team selection, the wrong tactical briefing, the wrong decision on whether to go left or right, to lunge in or stand ground, to shoot or to take another touch. That’s what makes the sport a sport. It’s the element of uncertainty, of judgement, of whether grace can be displayed under pressure, that makes us watch with such rapt fascination.

But let’s get serious here. When you have invested a lot of time and money into football, all this romantic nonsense about uncertainty and the beauty of human frailty really has no place. This is serious business we are talking about. And serious business cannot be left to chance.

What use is paying the most money ever paid for a striker if that player’s vital goal can be incorrectly ruled out for offside? What use is investing in a team if it can be denied qualification for a lucrative competition because an official didn’t see a ball cross a line? And so because something must be done – so often the reason for the worst of decisions – VAR was introduced. All the better that doing something gave the TV companies more content and a more central role. Now, it was not what the cameras covered, but the coverage itself that would become the focus.

Tellingly, VAR was introduced without consulting the paying customers. Their thoughts only counted when their discontent at previous bad decisions and errors could be cited as reason for bringing the change in, and when fans could be blamed for bringing it on themselves once criticism of the change grew. In football, sooner or later, everything is the fault of the stupid fans. Except the stuff that works, which is solely due to the genius of owners and administrators.

And so here we are, at the start of season six with VAR. Fans have had the chance to judge the reality, and are overwhelmingly against, particularly those who go to games. Because VAR has ruined the live experience. We are starting to hesitate to believe that what we see is what we’ve seen, spontaneity is suffocated because our lived reality is constantly subject to challenge. And arguments about mistakes have not gone away, they have just been replaced by different arguments about different mistakes. All of which is great content for TV companies, but not so good for football or the people who play and watch it. The clubs, knowing this, still contemptuously swept aside a proposal from Wolverhampton Wanderers to ditch the system. So much for fan engagement.

The proof that VAR is fundamentally flawed comes in the amount of changes and caveats that have come with since it was first inflicted on us. It is worth remembering, before considering these changes, that the beauty of football is that it is a simple game. Or at least, it was.

In 2021, “five key areas of difference” were introduced to improve upon the introduction of perfection. They included the pithy: “When an immediate goalscoring opportunity is likely to occur, the assistant referee will keep their flag down until the passage of play is completed. Once the goalscoring opportunity is complete, either a goal is scored or the chance is gone, the assistant will then raise the flag to indicate the initial offence. If a goal is scored the VAR will then review the offside judgement.” And the immortal advice that: “The [offside] protocol does not allow for tolerance levels.” Note how much subjective judgement resides within this supposedly precise scientific process, too.

There are a further 11 sections of explanation about VAR. This season, a further six new changes have been introduced to “make things better”. They include “increased communication” which involves the launching of dedicated social media channels that enable fans to access full explanations of why delays occur and what decisions are being taken.

Anyone who has ever tried to connect to a wifi network in a defined location alongside tens of thousands of other people will know that this change is no help whatsoever to the fans inside the stadiums – the fans who, once again, are being firmly told they don’t count. Typically, this measure to help the fans was introduced without consulting them. Although the Premier League does claim four out of five of us said we wanted to keep it in a survey that no one seems to have had sight of. Tellingly, consideration of the impact on the paying customers in the stadiums has been an afterthought throughout.

Let’s be honest, a system that needs 11 sections of explanation and multiple changes to improve it doesn’t keep the game simple. And it hasn’t made it better. Because a fundamental truth is being overlooked. You can draw all the lines, make all the explanations, introduce all the changes you want to show that a hair on a striker’s kneecap was marginally offside – but We Don’t Really Care. Now we’ve seen what happens when we reduce the game to lines and angles we can agree on the value of imperfection – football as Persian rug if you like. We have learned our lesson. We don’t want to watch a trigonometry lecture. We care about the simple beauty of our game.

It’s also worth noting that VAR breaks an important connection. Part of football’s simple beauty was the fact that essentially the same game was played at every level. Using VAR at elite level may not make it a different sport, but I’d argue it is sufficiently different to break the link that meant the basics of what happened on Hackney Marshes were the same as what happened at Old Trafford or White Hart Lane.

I began by saying VAR was the worst idea ever introduced in football. And I realise that sets me up to be knocked down. I’m willing to take alternative views on board, but just to recap, VAR;

• has ruined the live spectacle;

• overcomplicated a simple game;

• illustrated the game’s contempt for matchgoing fans;

• underlined the arrogance of those running the game and owning our clubs;

• further enabled the TV tail to wag the football dog;

• done nothing to eliminate the very thing it was introduced to eliminate – error.

You’ll need to go some to top that, but I’m all ears.

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Game over

The claim by lobby group Fair Game that Tottenham Hotspur was the “best-run men’s club in England” has deservedly attracted ridicule. That is sad because it undermines much-needed efforts to measure how well and how sustainably clubs are run.

I was involved with Fair Game when it was first set up. I thought a body that brought club boards committed to good governance together to establish best practice was A Good Thing. I severed ties over the way the organisation compiled its ratings indexes of clubs.

The concept of “best-run” is one open to much interpretation. Fair Game says it bases its definition on financial sustainability, good governance, equality and ethical standards, and fan and community engagement. All of which are very worthwhile pillars upon which to be judged. But football is also a sport, and England’s most well-run club is currently in the midst of the longest trophy drought in its history, and only recently out of a shambolic period in which sections of the club were at each others’ throats.

There needs to be a balance between sporting success and business success, but also recognition of what the business of sport is all about. Martin Samuel was quick to make this point, but then asserted his view that the trophies justify the means in his take down of the Fair Game ratings – typically shoehorning a dig at the entirely separate process of independent regulation into his column. But he did hit the right notes about the purpose of a football club. Which seem to have evaded Fair Game.

Doubts about the robustness of the Fair Game index have been expressed since Everton were last year rated as one of England’s best-run clubs. It’s an issue that has been openly discussed in the game. So it is hard to believe the board of THFC was not aware of this. But a board that defines the term hubris could not resist rushing to comment on its “delight” at being recognised as “a Club that prides itself on good governance - with a key focus on sustainability, fan engagement and delivering for our local communities”.

If good governance means having no checks or balances on a tight trio of executives, if fan engagement means consistently ignoring the views of fan organisations unless they can be used to buff up claims to favour equality while simultaneously discriminating against elderly fans, and if delivering for the local community means driving up property prices while also pricing members of one of London’s poorest local areas out of the stadium then Spurs are indeed leading the field.

Fair Game itself was happy to carry the endorsement of fan engagement champion and trophy specialist Daniel Levy while at the same time engaging in a public spat with Andy Holt, the chairman of Accrington Stanley who is widely regarded as one of the more progressive figures in the game. Holt’s approach aligns with Fair Game’s stated objectives, while Levy still believes involving his club in the attempted European Super League breakaway that would have destroyed English football was the right thing to do. That alone should give the organisation cause for thought.

Photo by Kaleidico on Unsplash