Get automated technology for offsides and when the ball is out the pitch there’s 2 less jobs the ref team have to worry about
Simplify the game for them and let them focus on the other stuff at least that way they aren’t totally distracted by everything
The key problem for me is that the initial decision on the field needs to have more weight and there need to be bigger hurdles to overturn it. The vast majority of decisions in football are judgement calls that can go either way and I feel that too many of those are being overturned because the ref leans in another direction after consulting VAR and for me that’s not enough. Unless he’s totally sure the initial decision was wrong that decision needs to stand.
VAR hasn’t ruined football PGMOL, just need to be a little less shit.
You will never end controversy or opinion difference, but cast your mind back to pre-VAR days and just fuck me things were bad. Total guess work everywhere, refs completely cowered by crowds (United went a decade without conceding a penalty at Old Trafford!), it was so much worse.
Literally just get PGMOL to a point where computers not some old guy is running offside lines manually and where apologies aren’t being handed out for wildly incorrect decisions and it’s party time.
The vast majority of gripes aren’t that VAR intervened it’s that they didn’t! Second most common gripe is that VAR did intervene but in a way that it never usually does (pull on a shirt at a corner for example).
Literally just get everyone on the same page, publish some guidelines/polices for commonly encountered situations (say shirt pulls in the box will only be a penalty if they have an observable consequence on the game) and lower the bar for intervention from clear and obvious to material and impactful and we’d be there.
This isn’t a hard situation to solve, it just needs to be iteratively improved, with the underpinning assumptions of what would work best critically evaluated and the games stakeholders communicated with openly and honestly.
Finally the movement to get VAR out of our game is gaining traction.
Carra is right on the goalline tech, that can stay. But the offside rubbish can get binned. Scoring a goal is the best moment in football bar none, having to faff around even for a few seconds spoils it. There was nothing wrong with having a linesman before and the “3 yards offside” described in the article happened so rarely it doesn’t matter.
Get fucking var out of the sport.
If the suggestion for an improvement in reffing is to get rid of VAR, then that suggestion is a joke
We can improve VAR.
-
have the semi-automated offside tech from the World Cup, this stops VAR used so often when disallowing goals and keeps it to checking for fouls and allows a freer flowing game.
-
have actual var teams rather than current refs
-
any decision that they deem should be checked at the monitor should be shown in full: Show the full play in normal speed, then show the full play in slow motion speed if requested
-
ref teams the same lol, none of this big 6 nonsene. Ref tottenham the same way you ref wolves
They should be working to implement fully automated offside calls anyway. Once that’s done, a huge source of frustration will be dealt with.
If the quality of VAR calls still doesn’t improve after that re: handballs, penalty calls etc., they can still take more drastic measures such as outsourcing VAR to a third party that is completely unaffiliated with the refs on the field, or even leaving all subjective calls to the on field refs and simply not interfering with handball/penalty/red card calls anymore.
No. Get rid of var totally. The only thing possibly worth keeping is the goal line tech.
It’s ruining the game and needs removed ASAP.
When var first came about it was supposed to account for the major mistakes only. It’s now for every ticky tack call
-
VAR became the main point of a lot of post-match discussions to the point that we never had so much complaining about refs. Every single big game has some VAR controversy, and this is just extremely bad.
VAR needs to move to WC’s version of offside (that one simply can’t be disputed, even if it’s 1mm offside it’s easier to swallow than the line garbage) and for ABSOLUTELY CLEAR decisions. If VAR is taking 5 minutes to decide on something then that’s ridiculous.
Or give coaches challenges or whatever. Current model is disgusting and ruining all of football discussions. I’m tired of analysing every single decision that refs make.
VAR is a wonderful tool. If you’re too stupid to use a tool then you should resign and give the spot to someone who CAN use it.
It’s funny yo see how many people here are against VAR, all of them with PL flairs. In the Eredivisie, it’s used in a (mostly) competent manner and I don’t think I’ve heard of a single person that wants VAR to be binned yet within Eredivisie context.
I know right? Getting rid of VAR is like demanding to get rid of cars because some drunk fool hit a child while coming back home from a bar.
Just because the English refs are incredibly incompetent and/or perhaps corrupt doesn’t mean that VAR in itself is bad. Ridiculous.
Replace the staff (they sure as shit got plenty of money to get the best refs in Europe) and get on with it.
Where was this energy after the weekend’s premier league games…?
Is this the same guy that called Arteta and Arsenal embarrassing for lambasting Var but now it’s Liverpool we need to limit it.
This guy is an absolute bellend.
I don’t see any hypocrisy. You can say that you think it’s wrong for the type of Statements Arteta came out with and at the same time not want VAR anymore.
We must instead limit dumb views like this one from Carragher.
This is what the refs have always wanted btw - they’ve never ever been under more scrutiny than they have the past couple seasons and they’re squirming trying to figure out a way to change the as is
Carragher doing PR pieces for the refs is an example of this shower of self-serving useless wankers trying to keep the status quo
Oh god I totally agree.
I think this forum is a great example of why VAR exists & why it’s shit.
Most people on here only watch their team on the TV, probably didn’t play. Consume football through online, mostly.
As a result there is this fucking hysteria around decisions and an obsession with there not being any errors.
It’s seen as like some deep rooted injustice now if a decision doesn’t go your way. Previously that was just sort of accepted & people move on. Now we have Reddit and twitter so people don’t move on, they post it and show angles and argue about it.
Before, you just went to the game or watched it on TV and that was kind of your consumption of that game over with.
I don’t know why people are so quick to ignore the actual football. Like Newcastle Arsenal. Tight game, but Newcastle were better than Arsenal. Yeah gooners didn’t get bailed out by the referee, but the fact is they still weren’t as good and that’s why they lost. - but all of that becomes irrelevant because there is some controversy to obsess over.
Had Arsenal just played well & won we wouldn’t have a fucking club statement, Arteta acting like he’s Malcom X & gooners fabricating illuminati level conspiracy theory bullshit as those Mike Dean is this puppet master over all pundits.
It’s a little bit worse on TV now, but it’s horrendous at the game. No doubt that it has negatively affected the match-going experience.
The people campaigning for the removal of VAR are clearly forgetting the rage over missed decisions in the pre-VAR age. I’m talking the Chelsea goal against Cardiff a few seasons back where the Chelsea player was like three yards offside, there was ghost goals such as the Liverpool champions league game (also against Chelsea) and the Lampard goal against Germany. People went ballistic over these errors at the time - Cardiff went on to be relegated, Chelsea and England were eliminated from their respective tournaments. The impact is huge on missing these mistakes.
The problem is not, and has never been VAR, the problem is the old guard of referees who do not know how to use it, or intentionally misuse it to bring about this exact discussion. The problem is pundits like Carragher who won’t bother to keep themselves updated with the latest rules, just so when there is a confusing handball given or not given, they can loudly declare that they don’t have a clue what football is anymore and this is all the fault of a fucking video system.
No, it’s not.