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    VAR

    It's a bloody mess. I really don't understand what's happening. Why does the match referee have to stand around for a couple of minutes to then be told that maybe she would like to view an incident? If she's not sure why can't she just signal that and run over to the pitch side screen and view it? In its present form VAR will kill football for the paying public.

    #2
    It's about fucking time that football started using video evidence to overturn clearly wrong decisions on the pitch. The current implementation could do with changes: the protocol is clearly suboptimal. But the days when blatant dives led to game-changing penalties are gone, the impossible to judge in real-time offside rule can now finally be checked, and both those things are good.

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      #3
      As I mentioned on another thread, why does the onfield ref even need to look? The panel in the booth watch a bunch or replays and decide there was probably something worth looking at, but then the process essentially starts from scratch with the onfield ref trying to get her head around replays rather than what see saw in real time. Rather than the doubling of the time and effort, why don't the booth actually make the call?

      And why is it like this this year when it was less bad (though far from perfect) 12 months ago?

      Something that is getting forgotten is that FIFA were quiet on whether or not they would be using VAR at this tournament until rather late in the day. It only got added a pretty well the last minute when people said WTF about a supposed positive addition being used in the Men's tournament a year ago but the Women's apparently not being important enough to justify it. I think the obvious conspiracy theory, that FIFA are deliberately sabotaging in response to being forced to pony up, is bogus - this could kill VAR from the entire sport. And VAR is something FIFA now seem committed to, losing it because it is rubbish would be an embarrassment for them. I'm put this more in the cock-up territory. They are trying to make it work, but it's just being done terribly.

      Oh, and the same report that reminded me of the VAR yes-or-no pre-tournament questions also noted that the new rule about 'keepers having one foot on the line was actually a relaxation from the previous set of rules. It was intended to aid 'keepers, not restrict them. Prior to 1st June, 'keepers technically had to have both feet on the line when the ball was kicked.

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        #4
        Or people could just trust the authority of the ref and accept that mistakes get made and suck it up, and then the common person's game wouldn't have to be different from the special version reserved for the elite who have a million cameras pointed at their match.

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          #5
          Football players and fans previously having an exemplary record of trusting the authority of refs and sucking up poor decisions against them.

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            #6
            Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
            Or people could just trust the authority of the ref and accept that mistakes get made and suck it up,
            I too want a unicorn and a lamborghini, but it ain't gonna happen.

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              #7
              Accept, if not trust the ref's authority. Somehow the game flourished for 150 years without VAR. Amazing really.

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                #8
                Originally posted by Janik View Post
                As I mentioned on another thread, why does the onfield ref even need to look? The panel in the booth watch a bunch or replays and decide there was probably something worth looking at, but then the process essentially starts from scratch with the onfield ref trying to get her head around replays rather than what see saw in real time. Rather than the doubling of the time and effort, why don't the booth actually make the call?
                This. Add in the variables involved in watching a screen pitchside (image clarity, influence of crowd etc) and you have a process designed for drama/farce, not reliable decision-making. Worst of all is when the referee decides, steps away from the screen and then goes back for another look. At which point any lingering confidence in the officials is gone for good.

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                  #9
                  If the people in the booth made the call then this would presumably be done on a majority verdict, which would itself take time,

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                    #10
                    Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
                    Or people could just trust the authority of the ref and accept that mistakes get made and suck it up, and then the common person's game wouldn't have to be different from the special version reserved for the elite who have a million cameras pointed at their match.
                    Exactly this. My worst moment in football was when Chelsea got an injury time penalty to equalise against Oxford in the FA Cup, when Kevin Francis was adjudged to have fouled a Chelsea player in the box.The worst part of it was having it confirmed afterwards (on the radio when in the car on the way home) that it wasn't actually a foul. Did it make me angry and depressed? Yes. Would I have rather VAR had been applied and Oxford had instead got through? No thanks - I'd rather have the odd error *no matter how galling*, if it keeps the simplicity of the referee's decision being final. So what if they make the odd mistake - adds to the rich tapestry of the game, I feel.
                    Last edited by Jimski; 23-06-2019, 07:05.

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                      #11
                      Originally posted by Sporting View Post
                      If the people in the booth made the call then this would presumably be done on a majority verdict, which would itself take time,
                      Wasn't VAR only meant to be for *obvious* errors anyway? If they're obvious, they shouldn't take more than a few seconds to decide.

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                        #12
                        You've said that a few times. It isn't true. Sometimes an error is totally blatant from one camera angle, but completely obscured from others*. Pre-tournament we discussed the controversial penalty given to Norway against Brazil at the 1998 Men's World Cup. The first TV pictures show not hint of a foul. It looks like Tore Andre Flo just flops to the ground. However, a different angle displayed that it was, in fact, a stonewall penalty exactly as the referee thought. As the blurb to this video says Referee Esfandiar Baharmast from the USA discusses the controversy, and how he was vindicated despite quick assumptions. That shows that, at the very least, all the available angles must be viewed once before anything can be declared 'obvious', which is going to take more than a few seconds.

                        * - for the same reason that we have at least three officials in each match (at elite level, which is already officiated differently). TV cameras can be blindsided just as easily as people, multiple viewpoints are the only effective way.

                        Intriguingly, that video, which dates from 2014, is making a different case against video replays and is making it well. Not using video being FIFA's position at the time, of course. The footage that showed the massive shirt pull was made public two days after the event. It was captured not by any of the match cameras but by (IIRC) a Swedish station who had their own extra camera at the game. Which just happened to be in the right place where all the main broadcast ones weren't. As such, it wasn't available to the world's media on the day of the game, nor would it have been to a putative VAR booth. If VAR had been in use on that game, it's highly likely that Norway's justified penalty, from which they scored a winning goal, would have been taken away. And without that goal, Norway would have been knocked out. FIFA must have this or similar situations in mind when saying don't rush to judgement, check from every angle.

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                          #13
                          I'm with SB. By far the best result of the the VAR experiment is that everyone realises that it is sucking the life out of the game and destroying it as a spectacle, and that we then abandon it and accept refereeing errors as part and parcel of the sport.

                          Won't happen of course, but it should. I am slowly coming to the realisation that i would prefer not to watch any football that involves VAR, and so that will be my default from here on.

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                            #14
                            I disagree with Janik. Something that turns out definitely to be true after careful study is not the same as it being obvious.

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                              #15
                              It would be lovely if ad hoc's wish came true. Won't happen, obv.

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                                #16
                                Originally posted by Jimski View Post
                                I disagree with Janik. Something that turns out definitely to be true after careful study is not the same as it being obvious.
                                Jimski, this



                                isn't an obvious foul?!?

                                Despite it being clearly so, there were a number of camera angles where it was completely obscured.

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                                  #17
                                  It depends on how you define obvious, I guess. I'm not sure something is obvious if you have to view it in many different ways to see that it's true.

                                  But yeah, there are two possible ways of thinking about it, I admit. One is that something is *clearly true if you observe it in a particular manner*, the other that one can *quickly* see that something is true. I personally would favour the second definition when it comes to adding delays to live sporting events, time being of the essence. I admit that FIFA (who seldom care much for paying spectators, it seems) might arguably have meant the first interpretation.

                                  You see how bloody annoying VAR is? Rather than settle arguments, it leaves us arguing over the definition of the word "obvious"!

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                                    #18
                                    Nah, VAR is the future.

                                    Refs have been making far too many glaring errors, occasionally deliberately, for decades now.

                                    The authorities made no effort to address this until now...
                                    So more to do with the implementation rather than the concept.

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                                      #19
                                      What AH said. Clarity and consistency in the rules and their interpretation is, of course, desirable, obvious mistakes being ruled out will be beneficial but surely not at the cost of constant interruptions to the flow of the game and the stifling of the intense link between a goal and its celebration.

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                                        #20
                                        There's a thread here somewhere about the controversy over year zero for domestic football stats now being the inception of the Premier League, isn't there. Well, seems like we could do with a less controversial year zero for international and domestic football - the introduction of VAR

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                                          #21
                                          OK, I'm sitting in a theatre watching Hamlet. Suddenly in the middle of act one the lights go up, the actors freeze and a voice from somewhere says:

                                          "This is the prompter, we think Gertrude might have have missed her cue back there. Our director is going to look at the video replay to see if we should return to the beginning of the scene to make sure we get it absolutely perfect. Thank You."

                                          Crazy right? but this is exactly what VAR does to to a football match. Football is a performance. The pitch is the stage, the supporters are the audience, the players and officials are the actors. We buy into that with price of admission. VAR is an external imposition, to extend the theatrical analogy, it's the the worst type of Deus Ex-Machina. Clumsy, unnecessary and destructive. And it's not just a matter of tweaking it to make it better. It needs to be gone. Period.

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                                            #22
                                            On another thread someone quoted Eni Aluko identifying the problem is that VAR isn't being used to catch refereeing errors as much as to enforce perfection. The penalty retakes are part of that and the Premier League has apparently said it's not going to use VAR to review penalties next season.

                                            Particularly the Renard retake - that wasn't a save. She missed the goal. So how was the infringement important?

                                            The debate about VAR and handballs is more about how crap the handball rule is now. But the crapness of the rule is down to multiple video replays over the past decades showing handballs that have been missed and the clamour for something to be done.

                                            FIFA must be aware that VAR looks like it's favouring the bigger teams, which is not a good look at all. (Having said that, Cameroon should have been a player down and there was no VAR for the elbow incident - why couldn't that have been reviewed?)

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                                              #23
                                              Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post
                                              OK, I'm sitting in a theatre watching Hamlet.
                                              Nah. Football is still football even if there is no-one watching it.

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                                                #24
                                                On the plus side, it could cut short wanky goal celebrations. Get back in your own half ASAP for a quick restart, before the lumbering VAR giant wakes up.

                                                Vauvin got injured when she scored for France, and in the ensuing delay her goal was disallowed. Team-mates should have picked her up off the ground and propped up her body like they did in Beau Geste. "We're ready, let's go, nothing to see here".

                                                One for the refs: if you get a yellow card for a celebration, but the goal is subsequently chalked off, should they rescind the card too? Eh? EH? (call now, back after these messages ...)

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                                                  #25
                                                  Your last point is specifically covered in the latest batch of changes: "A player can now be booked for celebrating - for removing their shirt or celebrating with the fans - even if the goal is disallowed."

                                                  Right at the bottom here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/48382254.

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