The history of football is a history of refereeing mistakes.
Monday night’s farcical misuse of VAR, which saw referee Enrique Caceres dither for minutes over whether to check the footage of a possible Portugal handball, eventually deciding to check, and then incorrectly awarding Iran an injury-time penalty, is just a digitally-enhanced chapter.
VAR might be the flashy new character, spicing things up in Season 114 of the world’s longest-running soap opera, but as with all soap operas, the story is much the same.
In 1986, Maradona shamelessly punched the ball into the back of the net before going on to score the most spectacular goals of all time — confirming his status as the greatest player of the decade. VAR would have deprived the world of these scenes.
Geoff Hurst’s shot never crossed the line against West Germany in 1966, and yet that one game has shaped the narrative around England’s national team for no less than 52 years.
Should Luis Garcia’s ghost goal against Chelsea really have stood? Without it, we wouldn’t have had the Miracle in Istanbul — the most spectacular game of club football possibly ever. Goal-line technology would have dissolved these moments with the snap of a finger like a big football Thanos.
And yet… Had VAR been employed that November night in the Stade de France then Ireland may have gone to the 2010 World Cup.
But these moments, these mistakes, these outright lies are what have shaped the story of football as we know it. None of them are arguments for or against VAR — they are merely evidence that football will always be bonkers, no matter how many robots FIFA put on their payroll.
Technology is a creation of humanity, just like football is. Humans are flawed monsters, and we pass on our flaws to our monstrous spawn. We have always been a chaotic little colony of ants doing our best to put some order on our hill — never truly succeeding, never making more than an inch of progress at a time, always stumbling backwards whenever we take a step in the right direction.
VAR is one such step in the right direction. It has indisputably improved the quality of refereeing at this World Cup. But for as long as technology is operated by humans, the species-in-chief of fucking things up, you better believe we’ll fuck it all the way up.
Referees trying to get everything right throughout a game of football, whether or not they’re assisted by technology, is like a man covered in butter trying to stay atop a rodeo horse. Profoundly entertaining, probably impossible, and often catastrophic.
Nevertheless, most criticisms of VAR have been proven untrue by the 2018 World Cup.
Didi Hamann has long argued that VAR would take the emotion, that instant emotional gratification of a goal or a sending off or an awarded penalty, out of the game. Last night, he lectured RTÉ’s Darragh Maloney as if he finally had his proof. He didn’t.
When will football fans ever get the chance to see the great Cristiano Ronaldo as rattled as he was last night? Waiting an eternity to learn whether or not he’d see his World Cup effectively ended thanks to a careless arm across the face of an Iranian defender. We’ve seen him cry, we’ve seen him lose… but we’ve never seen him scared to his very soul. We have VAR to thank for this.
Did you see his face when the ref trotted back on to book him? Trying to put it on like the ref was wrong to book him, while practically pissing himself with relief that he hadn’t been sent to the stands. It was like nothing we’ve ever seen from the world’s co-GOAT.
I will always love Dietmar Hamann, but he’s wrong about this. The emotion you feel when you’ve given away a penalty is surely nothing compared to the explosive fury you feel when you foul a guy in a box, think you’ve gotten away with it, then learn you’ve conceded a penalty a full minute later when you thought the whole world had moved on and the ball is up the other end of the pitch. The burst of adrenaline, the relief, and then the stab in the back. That’s real agony.
And most importantly, almost every time that the ref has consulted the video monitor, he has gone on to give the correct decision. Even last night, the other Group B game only saw Spain go top because the VAR correctly awarded a late goal to Iago Aspas.
Who knew that there was a way to make football both crazier and fairer all at once? When it comes to football, it turns out that there is nothing crazier… than the truth.
But by no means should anybody who hates VAR stop giving out about it. They have such an important role to play in this theatre of the nü-absurd.
Liam Brady needs to keep being Liam Brady. He should keep being Liam Brady so that the auld lads can cling to him and young lads can laugh at him and so that we never, ever come to a consensus on how football should be played, or watched, or even what the rules of the sport should actually be. Ian Wright can think VAR is mental. Gary Lineker can be all for it. None of it matters. What matters is that for 90+ minutes out on that field, none of us know what’s going to happen next.
As far as criticism of the VAR system, perhaps special consideration should be reserved for Brady’s wild and conspiratorial worries that the key decisions are being dictated or scripted by FIFA officials. Of all the complaints levelled at VAR, this might be the most bizarre, but it is also the scariest.
It’s one thing for a referee to get the decision wrong, as Caceres did for Iran’s penalty last night. It would be another thing entirely for the ref to be dictated to, according to FIFA’s interests. There’s no evidence of this happening besides Brady’s own anxiety, of course, but it’s still something to keep an eye out for.
It’s a concern that could be addressed simply by increasing transparency in the decision-making process. International rugby isn’t scared of fans hearing refereeing officials communicate. Football shouldn’t have anything to hide either.
But for now, VAR has done nothing to diminish the quality of refereeing. It has done nothing to diminish the drama of the World Cup. It has done nothing to diminish the talking points for pundits and punters alike. In fact, it has very likely improved all of those things. In the background, we’ve had a tournament with several major upsets, a dozen goal-of-the-tournament contenders, and nary a nil-all draw to be seen. What is there to worry about?
Those who argue too vociferously for or against VAR are in search of perfect football. Football that follows their guidelines. Football that works exactly the way they want it to. But football like that would be no football at all.
The moment that we perfect football is the day we burst the ball and all go home. As a football fan, VAR gives me heart.
Because VAR proves that day will never, ever come.
