The road to hell is paved with good intentions. But now it’s time to put VAR back into pandoras box before it’s too late.
VAR was brought in to make football purer. But has our desire for perfection damaged what we love about the beautiful game?
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” the ancient proverb warns.
In modern times, the term has been adopted in film and literature to express caution or regret at inadvertently causing disaster.
The perfectionists inevitably die in the following scenes. Normally by being stabbed to death by a rival (Romeo and Juliet) or eaten by a Velociraptor (Jurassic Park).
This week it was football’s turn to express regret after the latest VAR controversies in the Premier League.
Despite being heralded as a system that would eliminate unjust decisions, VAR has only caused mayhem since it was introduced in 2016.
According to FIFA, VAR has increased refereeing accuracy from 92.1% to 98.3%. An improvement, but not perfect.
But then is our quest for purity in football achievable in a sport that thrives in its unpredictability and tribalism?
We all like to believe that we know what a dangerous tackle or a penalty looks like, but the reality is that football is subjective.
What my dad’s version of a tough tackle is now a red card offence, one man’s push in the back is another’s weak defender and for every person who insists the ball is out, there is another screaming that the ball is round.
These arguments predate VAR. What has changed is the pressure on officials to be robots.
Technology in cricket and tennis is successful because you can factually decipher if the ball has nicked a bat or crossed a sideline without discussion.
However, every system that is controlled by humans is not infallible.
Changes can be made but what are we willing to sacrifice about the game we love to reach the promised land?
We can move to a system where the referees wear microphones like in Rugby and NFL.
Communication would ease frustrations of match going fans who are often left checking their WhatsApp messages to find out what is happening.
However, we will have to accept more disruption in big games like Spurs v Chelsea, when the ball was only in play for a third of a 56-minute first half.
The VAR officials made the correct decisions eventually. Probably taking longer to make sure they weren’t on the receiving end of a pile on.
Great for talking points in the media perhaps, but not for those in the stadium gasping for their next pint.
There have been other suggestions to improve VAR. Better training, semi-automated offside systems and importing better referees.
Maybe one of our pundits could put themselves forward rather than suggesting that nobody understands the game better.
Will AI be the answer to football’s quest for perfection if we persist? But then, what becomes of football?
Chances are we will still gorge each other over how VAR is implemented. Supporters will still be robbed of moments of joy over subjective decisions.
Then - like an old man shouting at a cloud - we will yearn for the days when football was fun. We tried, but now it is time to put VAR back into Pandora’s box before it’s too late.
