VAR and the Premier League - Does it need to go?

Since VAR was introduced in the Premier League at the beginning of the 2019-20 season, there have been countless amounts of controversial decisions enforced using it. Many players, ex pros and fans around the country have vocalised their discontent with the way VAR has been used since its introduction. After the Tottenham v Liverpool game this weekend, the tensions around the growing resentment of VAR have come into the limelight of all football talk in the UK. This article will take a look at the limitations VAR has shown, the premier league’s choice to not use semi-automated offsides, and look at whether VAR is a valuable addition to the game or not.

Before VAR was introduced in the Premier League, it would be hard to argue the fact there were more errors. Errors were happening on a regular basis, the difference being, fans were more accepting of these errors. People can accept that in a high-speed game it is extremely hard to get every call right. On top of this, the rules that govern football are largely subjective. The answer to whether a tackle is worthy of a yellow or a red, whether a challenge warrants a penalty being given or not, and whether a specific incident should be a handball or not will often change depending on who you ask. It should be added that while they were more accepting, there was still lots of anger when decisions went the wrong way, just not as severe anger, and it was shorter lived as people may not accept the decision, but they could accept mistakes are inevitable. However, fans are not so accepting of decisions that they disagree with when there is apparatus involved which is supposed to remove errors, and allows referees to look back at incidents they may have mistaken as legal or wrongly called illegal. Naturally, with the increased scrutiny every decision is made with using VAR, football fans are less forgiving of decisions they disagree with. The question is, if video assistance is compatible at all with the subjective rules of football? Whether VAR simply cannot work smoothly in football, or whether the reason it has been so controversial is due to how it is being used, and by who.

The PGMOL, who are the governing body of match officials in England, have issued 14 apologies since the introduction of VAR. These are issued in occasions where the errors are so bad, to the extent that the refereeing body have admitted the in-game decision was objectively wrong. On top of this, there have been many decisions where the majority of fans agree the decision in game is the wrong one, although the PGMOL did not issue an apology. For example, Pickford’s challenge on Van Dijk not being a red card in October 2020 and Ederson’s challenge on Ryan Fraser not being a penalty in December 2021, as well as plenty of others. For this many errors to be made, where the referees themselves or if not, the majority of people think the decisions are objectively wrong, it would suggest that those using VAR are incompetent. The idea that English refereeing is not of the highest standard, can be backed up by the fact only 2 English referees were selected out of 36 for the World Cup 2022, while there were none selected for the 2018 World Cup. It seems clear that some changes need to be made to enhance refereeing standards, or at least hold referees accountable the same way players are for insulting those who officiate games.

The game on the weekend between Tottenham and Liverpool was riddled with VAR controversy, with no decision more shocking than Luis Diaz’s goal incorrectly being called offside. As much as there is subjectivity in football, a few things are objective and offsides are one of them. Albeit that incorrect decision was due to quite extraordinarily bad communication and lapse of concentration, as opposed to VAR deciding it was offside, there have been some occasions since the Premier League started using VAR, of goals wrongly being decided as offside. Estupinan had a goal wrongly disallowed against Crystal Palace in February this year, while Christian Norgaard was offside in the build to Ivan Toney’s goal against Arsenal also in February this year. Both Brighton and Arsenal, similarly to Liverpool this week, were compensated for this error with an apology from the PGMOL.

With three offside related errors, and three apologies from the PGMOL, it begs the question why the Premier League turned down the option to have semi-automated offsides this season. Semi-automated offsides were used in the World Cup and the Champions League last season, and were available for the Premier League to use this season, however, the option was turned down. With semi-automated offsides, essentially 12 tracking cameras are used underneath the roof of the stadium, tracking the ball and players. You can read more about how it works in detail on Fifa’s website[1]. This system will automatically notify VAR if a player is offside, with VAR’s job being to check the automatically selected kick point and the automatically created offside line is correct, which will take less than 5 seconds usually. The image of the offside is then shown to a screen in the stadium to explain the decision to the match attending fans. The reason why the premier league turned down this system is unclear. 90 Min have reported that one of the reasons for it not being used, is a belief that it would soon become outdated[2], while the Daily Mail claim that the league’s ball sponsors, Nike, have issues with the ball tracking technology that is required in the ball for this system to work[3].

A league which did decide to introduce semi-automated offsides is the Serie A. Serie A had an incident in September last year where Juventus’ last-minute winner against Salernitana was wrongly awarded offside. The outrage from this prompted the league to introduce semi-automated offsides half way through the season in January of this year. We spoke to Nima Tavallaey from The Italian Football Podcast[4], who’s knowledge on all things Serie A is much greater than ours, and when referring to the introduction of semi-automated offsides in Italy he expressed that is has been viewed “as a good thing”. He went on to say how “in the age of VAR, it is unacceptable to not be able to get offside calls correct”. So, it seems this decision and the use of semi-automated offsides has been widely accepted among Serie A fans as a good addition to the league. Premier league fans will have already seen it in the Champions League and the World Cup, and all the evidence so far would suggest it is probably the best way forward in terms of officiating offsides. As Tavallaey expressed, offside calls should always be correct with video assistance, thus it seems the decision to introduce semi-automated offsides to the Premier League is a no brainer.

Even though VAR has just added to the pressure and scrutiny referees’ subjective decisions have been put under, now the footballing world has started using VAR (and all the top leagues do) it may be a step too far to suggest everyone would be happier if it was scrapped. The reality likely is that now we have had a taste of it, the inevitable additional errors that will be made if it was removed, will lead to people asking why they have scrapped it. What is clear though is that it needs to refined and enhanced to reduce the number of errors that still occur with it in use. The introduction of semi-automated offsides seems inevitable, the fact it is not already in place in the Premier League is quite baffling. Improvements need to be made to refereeing training, as the standard of officiating has just not been good enough, a view which most premier league fans will agree on. A choice to make conversations between VAR and the referee available for fans watching on live TV would also likely aid referees in explaining their decision-making process. There is a strong argument that the subjectivity that is inherent in the rules of football, is not compatible with the use of video assistance, as even with the help of rewatching an incident, a borderline decision could go either way. However, if VAR is to stay and be more successful, it certainly needs to be reformed to limit the mistakes that it supposedly is meant to be cutting out.

Article written by

Cameron Singh

[1] https://www.fifa.com/technical/football-technology/football-technologies-and-innovations-at-the-fifa-world-cup-2022/semi-automated-offside-technology [2] https://www.90min.com/posts/why-premier-league-doesnt-use-semi-automated-offsides [3] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-12589707/Premier-Leagues-plans-automatic-offside-VAR.html [4] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxGxoFfN5LFrCOvbT2IkdPw