VAR in football does not work correctly. Take a cue from the NFL

The video assistance system for referees, or VAR for short, is already actively used in big European football, and from the new year the innovation will be used on an even larger scale. But does everything work perfectly in this technological novelty?

Barcelona’s Uruguayan striker Luis Suarez called the VAR system a “blow to happiness”, despite the fact that with the help of this technology, his goal against Huesca in the Spanish championship was still counted. However, Louis was extremely dissatisfied with the decision-making process on the ball scored by him, which he did not forget to tell reporters after the game. “Knowing that the VAR system works at the match, you lose adrenaline and the desire to celebrate. Your emotions can be trampled on in just a few seconds, ”said the striker.

And if a person was dissatisfied with the novelty of technology, whose goal was not canceled in the end, then what can we say about Lazio defender Francesco Acerbi, in a situation where VAR ruined his life in Bergamo in the last round of Serie A for him and his team? Already in stoppage time, Acerbi successfully connected to the attack, leveled the score with a cool header (Lazio was losing 0:1) and went to celebrate with his partners and the coaching staff. Roman mentor Simone Inzaghi was in seventh heaven for saving a draw on the road, but after a few minutes the coach and his players experienced exactly the opposite feelings. After all the judges, after lengthy revisions of the video, decided that the goal should not be counted, and this “offside” in Acerbi was to blame.

So insignificant that it took the VAR team about three minutes to capture the right freeze frame, and the main referee, the players of both teams, coaches and fans were in limbo all this time.

Time-consuming watching controversial episodes is the main and most common complaint against the VAR system in football. For example, in Germany, about 47% of Bundesliga fans (data from Kicker) do not support the use of VAR precisely because it takes a long time.

But this claim is not the only one. There are others. Different technical conditions for using the system (in one situation, the operator can simply miss a controversial episode, and in another, the TV team will work perfectly), the desire of the arbitrators to completely shift the responsibility for the decisions made to the “TV”. Finally, using VAR in too many situations, although the technology was originally conceived to get rid of obvious referee errors during the match. But is the above-mentioned episode with the canceled goal of Acerbi an obvious mistake, if it is counted?

However, even if we do not get hung up on just one episode from the match in Bergamo, the question of what the VAR system in football works somehow too focused on refereesremains relevant. The VAR system should be under the control of the main actors – football players and coaches – while the judges should only play the role of a lever, and not at all the one who presses it.

In this respect, in my opinion, The video replay system works perfectly in the NFL – American Football League. There, the judges are not at all responsible for viewing controversial situations, without fail reviewing only episodes with “touchdowns”, but other controversial points are considered only at the request of head coaches throwing red flags on the field and requesting a “challenge”. And most importantly – All this is a severely limited phenomenon.. The coach of each team can only ask for the challenge twice per match (maximum three if the first two attempts were successful). And this is what sorely lacking in European football – the limit on the use of VAR and the responsibility for its use, which lies with the coaches, not the referees.

Here’s a fresh example of how it works in the NFL. In the Green Bay vs. Atlanta game, Packers coach Joe Philbin threw two unsuccessful challenges at once in just a few starting minutes of the game. Recklessly using his right to influence the decisions of the referee in the future, the “coach” also lost two timeouts, thus saving the audience playing time and reducing the number of pauses in the remaining quarters of the match.