In the build-up to the implementation of VAR in the Premier League at the start of the 2019-20 season, we chased the illusion of the perfect game, a game where officiating became less visible, a game where mistakes were never made, a game where referees faced less abuse, a game where conspiracy theories became obsolete.
So let’s call this our seven-year-itch. Because in the time that has elapsed, VAR has not had the effect that those of us who were in favour of it dearly hoped that it would.
It has had, if anything, the opposite effect. The idea VAR would help us talk more about football and less about refereeing decisions is dead. It has been dead for some time.
More and more, football is becoming less about sport. For many, including the clubs trying to find ways to ban season-ticket holders and admit high-spending day-trippers in their place, its value lies in the idea that it is an adjunct to showbiz.
The sport itself is an inconvenient distraction. And VAR has become an indispensable part of that trend.
Technology was supposed to be the gateway to better games and fewer controversies but machines, and the human beings who operate them, have limits and we have found those limits.
You want a clear and obvious error? How about this: our game spends way more time than is healthy obsessing about contentious offsides and trying to decipher laws that seem so arcane that they baffle and perplex and enrage us.
Technology was supposed to be the gateway to better games and fewer controversies but machines, and the human beings who operate them, have limits and we have found those limits
Referee Michael Oliver waits for the VAR to reveal the decision around Erling Haaland’s goal in the Manchester derby
You want to know what VAR has done? It has spread the blame. Now we can scream at the referee, his two linesmen, the fourth official and the unfortunate official sitting in a room surrounded by screens at Stockley Park, trying to compute a series of questions being thrown at him by a football match and knowing that every second he delays brings the wrath of the watching public down around his ears.
Its other achievement? It has robbed the Premier League and other forms of so-called elite football of its spontaneity. It has robbed football fans of their greatest joy, which is celebrating a goal with abandon.
Abandon has been taken away from fans of top-flight clubs now because there is always, always that thought in your head that maybe you have missed something. Maybe that goal you just thought you saw wasn’t a goal after all.
We have got to a stage where even discussion of a game like Sunday’s Manchester derby, always one of the biggest fixtures in the domestic calendar, is totally dominated by VAR’s incomprehensible decision to allow Erling Haaland’s winning goal for Manchester City even though Enzo Fernandez was clearly in an offside position and clearly influenced play when he flung himself at the ball in the build-up.
It is a textbook example of how VAR has made football worse. Michael Oliver, the on-field official at Old Trafford, is the best referee in this country and yet in VAR’s haste and confusion, in its desperation to make a decision and let play resume, it cut Oliver out of the decision-making process and did not call him to the screen so he could review the action himself.
The way the VAR system works, the on-field official is not party to the discussions going on at Stockley Park and so, as the lengthy mea culpa from ProRef appeared to admit on Sunday evening, the first Oliver would have known about the decision to overrule the original offside flag against Haaland and allow the goal to stand was when the decision was relayed to him as a fait accompli.
It appears that VAR had become so single-minded about deciding whether Haaland was offside – he wasn’t – that it totally neglected to consider the subjective decision about whether the actions of Fernandez influenced play. Then it neglected to recommend Oliver, who would surely have ruled out the goal had he been allowed to see a replay, conduct an on-field review.
And so City, who were the better team, won the game with a goal that should not have stood. And it may be a goal with far-reaching repercussions.
City won with a goal that should not have stood with a diving Enzo Fernandez clearly interfering with play from an offside position before Haaland scored
Maybe the two extra points City gained because of it will be critical in the outcome of this season’s title race
Michael Carrick, the Manchester United manager, is certainly under increased pressure because of it. Maybe the two extra points City gained because of it will be critical in the outcome of this season’s title race.
It was good old-fashioned human error. We don’t need VAR for human error. We are more than capable of that ourselves. VAR was supposed to eradicate human error. But it hasn’t. It has added another layer of human error.
On Sunday, the incompetence of VAR was allowed to override the excellence and experience of the match official. It was a mess. Its only redeeming feature was that it was an honest mistake.
A bit like VAR itself really. VAR was an error. More and more people are recognising that. More and more people are losing their love of the game because of it.
More and more people feel it is taking away what is most precious about the sport. I have thought this for a while now and Sunday only confirmed it: it is time for the end of the error.
There is a widespread and increasingly damaging perception that the Premier League is moving further and further away from its fanbase. There is an increasing feeling, in fact, that some of its clubs regard their fan-bases with barely-disguised contempt. If they do nothing to banish VAR, then it will be more proof of that.
It is within their power to scrap it in their own competition. Sweden’s Allsvenskan operates without it. If the Premier League clubs wanted to turn their backs on it and show fans they care about them, they could vote to abandon it.
If they operated with vision or conviction or loyalty to supporters, the Premier League would do the right thing. But it won’t.
Fernandez goes for the ball drawing Lisandro Martinez into the centre of the goal and leaving Haaland unmarked
Michael Carrick, the Manchester United manager, is under increased pressure because of the error made by the VAR
Match of the Day offers a welcome shot in the arm
In the first few weeks of this football season, I have felt in danger of becoming a statistic: one of the growing percentage of viewers turning away from Match of the Day. I have been a loyal viewer for 50 years but sometimes, it has felt as if the demise of the programme is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Seducing the reduced-concentration generation with separate highlights packages and facing more episodes without the services of some of their best pundits is not a combination designed to boost audience. But on Sunday night, even more in need of distraction than usual after dropping off my son for his first day at university, I found refuge in it again.
It was still like turning to an old friend. Mark Chapman is as good as any presenter on television, Wayne Rooney and Danny Murphy are excellent pundits with personality and attitude and the Manchester derby yielded up a range of controversies for them to discuss.
The BBC may be trying to wean us off it but I’m not ready to let it go just yet.
