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up today do you remember before var
when every refereeing decision was a
major talking point
when i guess we'll never really know was
a reasonable refrain
well of course you do because while var
promised an end to the unknown
in reality it magnified it now to give
var its credit
we may never have another mistake as
egregious as thierry henry's handball
or alex oxlade-chamberlain being
mistaken for kieran gibbs
but the truth is that for all its
successes var illuminates complex
problems
without providing proper answers it
highlights a terminal conflict between
two now-diverging concepts
observation and application and this
conflict
now at the heart of the sport threatens
to change the way the game is played
forever
[Laughter]
the ar's introduction to the premier
league was unavoidable the history of
the sport
is littered with refereeing errors and
by 2019
supporters were clamoring for a solution
but why
well because most football leagues
operate in pyramid structures
they use promotion and relegation as
tools of social mobility
the idea being that a team at the bottom
of the pyramid could theoretically reach
the top
now for human beings that's a very
engaging narrative but it's based on the
fundamentals of fair play and even
playing fields
and unfortunately refereeing errors can
challenge those tenants
now the driving factor of course is that
the technology to monitor some of these
errors is readily available
but as dr ian malcolm once presciently
said
they were so preoccupied with whether or
not they could they didn't stop to think
if they should of course technology
isn't all bad but there are important
distinctions to make
because prior to the introduction of var
the premier league already utilized goal
line technology
on the 18th of january 2014 manchester
city's edin jeko became its first
beneficiary
his goal that day against cardiff city
was the league's first awarded by the
use of technology
in 2020 sheffield united were denied a
goal against aston villa due to a glitch
in the hawkeye system
but this remains the only black mark on
an otherwise impeccable record
goalline technology is clearly a success
but its success is not the technology
it's the application it's a goal or it
isn't there's no margin for error no
middle ground no uncertainty whether or
not a ball has crossed a line is the
perfect use case
for technological assistance because
there is no gap between the observation
of that event
and the ability to apply the correct
outcome
var however is utilized to observe a
broader range of events
these incidences are categorized as
goals penalty decisions
direct red card incidents or mistaken
identity
and it's only to be used for clear and
obvious errors or
serious missed incidents so you're
either kieran gibbs or you're not and
that's fine
but in the other three categories things
are not quite as simple
take for example an incident in a game
between chelsea and manchester united
in february 2021. callum hudson adoye
and mason greenwood collide in chelsea's
penalty area
and the event is reviewed to check for a
possible handball
now at first it appeared as if it was
greenwood who had handled the ball
so much so that surrounding chelsea
players loudly appealed
for a free kick yet upon review it was
shown that it was actually hudson a
doy's hand
that made contact and yet no penalty was
awarded
so let's go through this process now
this can fairly be described as a
serious missed incident
a trigger for the video assistant
referee to complete a check
however unlike our goal or no goal or
gibbs or not gibbs incidents
this isn't clear-cut thereby creating a
gap between observation
and application and to bridge this gap
we need to
interpret and this is where the messy
human errors
find their way back into the system you
see var
isn't a problem it simply illuminates
the problem of applying
the rules and here are the rules
relating to handball offenses
the truth is that there simply cannot be
a conclusive answer because the rule
requires a degree of interpretation what
is deliberate
to what degree of accuracy can you
determine the boundary of the arm
to what extent does an arm make the body
unnaturally bigger
the answer is individual to the
individual providing the answer
because it cannot not be so we were
interpreting before var
and we are interpreting now and it's
inarguable that the technology allows us
a greater chance of applying the correct
outcome
in scenarios where there is such a thing
as a correct outcome
but that's not really the problem the
problem is that the rules of the game
are being changed to accommodate this
greater observational access
at the beginning of the 2019-20 season
ifab
amended the handball rule the aim was to
make handball incidents easier to
interpret or in our language to shorten
the gap
between observation and application
across
europe these adjustments led to a
significant rise in the number of
penalties
awarded for handball fouls and at the
beginning of the 2020-21 season
fifa in charge of the implementation of
the ar insisted that the premier league
follow suit
and apply the stricter interpretation
this consequently led to a similar rise
in handball penalties awarded and has
been a source of
much consternation with supporters
players and managers
the reaction to which has been the
apparent easing of that strict
interpretation
leading us full circle back to hudson
odoi whose handling of the ball very
likely would have resulted in a penalty
had it happened just a few months
earlier and herein
lies the danger the rules are being
changed in order to improve the
efficiency
of var if interpretation plays too much
of a role
in a way that now millions of people see
on televisions every weekend
then the instinct is to amend the rules
to be increasingly black and white
and to apply a definitive lens to areas
of the game
which were always intended to be
subjective
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