Editor's Blog
VAR (Video Assistant Referee), as a system used to help match officials in football, is an excellent idea. In fact, long overdue, methinks! The football community as a whole needed to get to this point, because there is no denying that we live in an era of enlightenment, particularly when it comes to inventing tools meant to make our lives easier. The telephone was initially invented as a basic tool to assist with audio communication for people separated by distance. The cellphone improved the idea by taking away the limitation of mobility. Today, the cellphone can do all kinds of additional tasks; in fact, if the inventor of the original telephone were to come back to life for 24 hours, he would be blown away by how his idea was improved upon. The first professional match in which the VAR was used was Melbourne City v Adelaide United in the Australian league, with the irony being that the game so smooth and uneventful that the system went unused for the whole game. This was a materialisation of an idea that had been conceived, planned, trialled and lobbied for by progressive football thinkers for years, yet it was only in April 2017 that the system was implemented in a professional football match. As it stands, the VAR system is used sporadically; some leagues use it, an overwhelming majority of leagues around the world don't use it. To put this in context, major sports like cricket and rugby were already decades ahead of football in their integration of video assistants to aid the on-field match officials before football finally decided to join the party, albeit reluctantly. The TMO (Television Match Official) and the DRS (Decision Review System) used in rugby and cricket are used in principle and application as an aide to the on-field match official and mainly to alter or verify decisions made by the referee/umpire that have the potential to change the game - i.e. reversal of an incorrectly awarded wicket in cricket or the verification of whether a try was scored or not. Needless to say, there are stoppages, but more importantly, there are more correct decisions made. Football has been grappling with the idea of introducing VAR for a very long time. One of the biggest drawbacks mentioned by the naysayers was that too many stoppages would make the game less interesting and, as a result, the beautiful game may lose a portion of its audience. Of course, the flaw in that argument is that football, by the sheer nature of its design, invariably brings about an almost guaranteed certainty that there will always be breaks in play due to injuries, substitutions and other factors. Technology in football has not always been unwelcomed, because if you think about it, the game is where it is now largely due to the advances made in the technological sphere. The pace of the game is faster and there are less chronic injuries to players now than there were 30 years ago. Think about the weight of the ball that was used in the 1900s and how different the current ball is to that and how much the current ball enables the game to be played at a better pace. Every season, new innovations are introduced in the designs of playing kits – the kits are lighter in mass and most are sweat-resistant. Never in my life have I seen a team doctor or physiotherapist enter the field smoking a cigarette and carrying a bucket full of water to treat a broken leg. Read any autobiography of players who played after the Second World War and you will realise that this unprofessional act was a norm. I can go on and on… point is, the sport has improved in some aspects but has tiptoed around improving the most important aspect of the game for too long. VAR as a system is an excellent addition to football and I think we will grow into accepting the stoppages as part of the game just as other sports fans have done, just as long as the stoppages get us to the point where we eliminate the glaring errors made by officials. The VAR is not going to help us achieve perfection; however, it will reduce the number of errors that incorrectly sway results one way or the other. If by any chance, you had the opportunity to watch the competition called Super Rugby, then you will know what I am talking about. Even under the ultra-slow motion, some tries given by the TMO divide opinions. Fans, players, coaches, referees and administrators are the biggest threat to the survival of the system and its continued use in the game. The system is not here to resolve questions that have plagued the game since time immemorial. "Ball to hand or hand to ball?" The answers to such questions have always been outsourced to the men in the middle, the officials, and we have always relied on their educated judgments to mitigate between our subjective interpretations. Nigerian fans strongly feel that Marcos Rojo should have been penalized for handball and that a penalty should have been granted to their Super Eagles, this regardless of whether the ball took a slight deflection in another body part before it hit the arm. Spain still feel aggrieved of the handball and penalty awarded to host nation Russia, despite the hands of Gerrard Pique being where they were. Colombians, supported by Diego Maradona, view their match against England in which they were knocked out as a miscarriage of justice. To them, Harry Kane was not fouled. All of this is unsurprising. Human beings are subjective. The system so far has worked really well, in my opinion. I would really like to see fewer complaints from the players; only the captain should be allowed to query a referee, just as it is the case in other sports. The cost of the technology means that some leagues in poor continents may not afford to implement it, but in general, the system needs to be viewed as part of the game and a tool that will make our lives easier, even if it means deciding against the big teams. That's it, Nkululeko, Soccer Laduma Radio journalist
