VAR Is Slowing Down Football

featured image from commons.wikimedia.com

Video Assistant Referee(VAR) is one of the most recent technologies used in football by FIFA. It has a significant impact on football even though it is quite current technology. It has been active for big competitions of the European football such as UEFA champions league, Italy Serie A, England premier league and FIFA 2018 world cup which is one of the most significant sports events in the world.

IS VAR SLOWING DOWN THE GAME?

Football is now a very fast-paced game compared to 80s and 90s and maybe even for early 2000s. Football games played in a very high tempo insignificant football leagues, which is quite challenging. However, that is what makes football fun. That is one of the main reasons fans enjoy and prefer watching games from major football leagues. Following this, is VAR ruining football in terms of it’ s visual aspects by slowing it down? Since the review of the VAR prevents the game from being fluent. Furthermore, killing the tempo is not just a visual problem for fans, but also a significant challenge for the football teams who intend to play in a high pace in terms of tactics and VAR may not be a friend for those teams.

According to PGMOL manager Mark Riley, the most extended VAR decision took 118 seconds to make in the game Southampton versus Derby. He also said that they aim to be quicker, but at this point, this amount of time is a good trade to be able to make the right decision

IS IT A FAIR TRADE?

Mark Riley says it is a fair trade but does VAR %100 make the right decision. There is also a definite fact that VAR is still a group of people just like a referee on the pitch. They are human and tend to make mistakes. Reviewing positions may not always get the right decision without a doubt.

For instance, back in 2017 semifinal game of the Confederation Cup played between Germany and Chile. The referee Milorad Mazic went to VAR on an apparent harsh foul which should have been a red card. VAR took 4 minutes to make the decision, and their decision was still wrong after that 4-minute delay.

West Ham United manager Manuel Pellegrini also admits and says “You cannot expect that VAR will erase all the mistakes made by the referee; that is impossible because if you did you would have to consult every play, see the VAR and that makes the game too slow for everyone” and he adds “ VAR will be better the more we use it”.

Statistics say opposite

 

According to IFAB and KU Leuven’s study on over 972 competitive football games all over the world, the stats show that 69.1 per cent used VAR while 5.5percent of the games did not have to use it. 57.4 per cent of the use of VAR was for penalty reviews, and 42.1 per cent of checks were for red card decisions.

While all these reviews happening statistics show that VAR reviews take the median time of 35 seconds, whereas the considerations and decisions on the pitch take around 68 seconds which is almost twice as VAR checks.

Stats show us that VAR decisions were faster than the ones in green pitch. However, that reminds the famous quote of Sir Alex Ferguson, former Manchester United manager, about statistics. He says “statistics are like mini-skirts, they do not reveal everything”.

 

TO SUM UP

VAR was supposed to end or at least decrease the controversy on the pitch. By assisting the referee. Funny, the whole industry is more controversial than ever. 

Hope you enjoyed my new post. If you liked it please check out my other social media accounts and posts as well.