Cricket has got it pretty much spot on but football has made a mess of it – VAR
OK the English cricket season is now over so I’ll take a bit more interest in football and on this occasion the shambles VAR has become; well it always has been since they brought it in!
The disallowed Liverpool goal against Spurs yesterday was criminal as VAR said it was offside when it clearly was NOT! VAR is there to correct refereeing mistakes not to endorse such mistakes but there’s a pattern to this as football has never really got VAR right in my view.
The decision should always be the referee’s with VAR being there to assist. Sounds simple doesn’t it, so why is it that a straight forward simple process keeps going wrong?
I have no love for those who run English cricket as they’ve seemingly been doing all they can over the last 30 years or so to kill the game off via far too much of it only being available via pay-per-view TV (often without even highlights on free to view TV), inflexible central contracts for the best players meaning they hardly ever turn out for their home county team and that damned 100 competition. However, one thing they’ve got pretty much right and I give them credit for is the use of video reviews. OK it’s a totally different game to football but surely there are some pointers within what cricket does which could help our football leaders put right the mess that is VAR.
I’d stick with the referee making the decisions but give each team what in effect would be a number of appeals, say 3 in each half against the ref’s decision. If the appeal shows the ref was wrong then fine change the decision and the team keeps 3 appeals for that half. If a team appeals and the ref was right the team loses an appeal. Yes of course some hot-heads would use their 3 appeals up in the first 10 minutes of a half but they'd soon learn to be more circumspect before demanding a VAR review.
There’s also some situations where the ref would like VAR help as they had not fully seen it or found it hard to judge a matter. So I’d say the ref’s can call for a VAR check. I’d stop automatic VAR checks and leave it to teams appealing against the ref’s decision or the ref asking for a review.
Trouble is if the review of VAR videos fails then it all falls apart anyway as Liverpool found out yesterday.
