The VAR Debate

Belgium's Disciplinary Council for Professional Football has ruled that Genk's defeat to Anderlecht must be replayed in full due to a VAR error. A Genk penalty was disallowed after a VAR check found that a Genk player was encroaching. What VAR didn't notice was that an Anderlecht player was also encroaching. This meant that the penalty should have been re-taken.

This is now getting silly. How many games over the years would have been replayed if referees' errors had been taken into account? Our game yesterday against Barrow, for one.

VAR OUT!

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Originally Posted by 60YearsAPie

Belgium's Disciplinary Council for Professional Football has ruled that Genk's defeat to Anderlecht must be replayed in full due to a VAR error. A Genk penalty was disallowed after a VAR check found that a Genk player was encroaching. What VAR didn't notice was that an Anderlecht player was also encroaching. This meant that the penalty should have been re-taken.

This is now getting silly. How many games over the years would have been replayed if referees' errors had been taken into account? Our game yesterday against Barrow, for one.

VAR OUT!

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It only gets worse instead of better.

VAR isnt the problem its the standards of the idiots using it.

VAR’s shyte, no need for technology other than for offsides and goal line calls.

It wouldn’t even have told the ref to send that Barrow yoof off or given us the penalty. Waste of time.

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Originally Posted by legs77

VAR isnt the problem its the standards of the idiots using it.

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Agreed. Or the systems and rules by which they're using it. There are always going to be controversies and disagreements, but they manage to use VAR in the world cup/European Championships without anything like the major issues or the delays, or at least that's how I remember them.

There's no case that I can see for replaying games due to VAR error like the one in Belgium, even when there's process errors like in the Liverpool-Spurs games. Those are just misapplications of the laws of the game, and that's always happened.

VAR should be for clear and obvious errors only - otherwise, on-field decision stands. If it takes several minutes to work it out, that's neither clear nor obvious as an error. No re-refereeing. We need clear criteria for when the referee gets invited to come to the monitor... I can't work out what the rule is for that... why does it happen some times and not others? If it's because the VAR officials can't make up their minds, then the on-field decision stands. Oh, and stop giving quite so many decisions to the Big Sky Teams.

I think VAR has been a necessary evil. For decades folk have moaned about human error in footballing refereeing decisions and pointed to other sports where technology has been used to eradicate this. In football we still have the humans making the decisions and using some technology to help them but the errors persist. Perhaps we can now say we tried it failed and go back to standard ref errors but be a little more accepting of them? Anyway who doesn't love a good ref error if you are not supporting the team on the receiving end of it?

Rugby seems to use it so much better.

Hate the offsides for a toe being in front of the defender, what the frick is that all about. Not a clear and obvious error so why intervene? Spontaneity of celebrating a agoal removed.

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Originally Posted by uysapie

Hate the offsides for a toe being in front of the defender, what the frick is that all about. Not a clear and obvious error so why intervene? Spontaneity of celebrating a agoal removed.

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The Man City offside against Spurs on Friday night was a classic example of that. This ridiculously forensic analysis has turned the game into CSI: Football. In fact, I’m sure some criminal cases aren’t examined in as much depth as a few of the handball decisions in the Premier League.

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Originally Posted by bule1

Rugby seems to use it so much better.

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Does it? I’m sure there was controversy at the recent World Cup.

I agree that VAR should only deal in factual stuff - Is it offside? did it cross the line? Is there violent conduct that’s been missed?