Why has VAR brought about so much controversy?
Football – a sport watched by millions of people in the UK every year.
In fact, according to Statista, the average attendance at a Premier League match in the 2022/23 season was 40,236.
In total, 380 matches are played every season in the Premier League, meaning that approximately 15,289,680 attended matches live in the Premier League from September 2022 – May 2023.
But how has technology changed the beautiful game.
The most notable use of technology in football for the public (especially for keen watchers) is the use of VAR (Video Assistant Referee).
VAR was first introduced in 2019, as a way to help referees make the correct decision.
The introduction of this has had a clear impact on football today, but why has controversy has come about surrounding the use of VAR.
First, we must answer the question of what actually is it?
Well, VAR has two main parts.
Firstly, an internal room, located at Stockley Park in West London.
This room has a team of 3 people in it whose job it is to watch the reviews of incidents that take place in matches and check for any missed decisions or errors made by the on-field referee and assistant referees.
The second part is a screen on the side of the pitch in which the on-field referee will go to make a decision after a check in the internal room.
The people in the room are connected to the on-field referee and are able to communicate with them, able to discuss these decisions.
Now we know what it actually is, we can ask the question of why it is so controversial?
This is for many reasons including the subjectivity that football brings as well as the strong feelings towards football for many football fans.
Well, the real controversy comes around due to the decisions made by it, for or against a certain team.
Football fans are often very passionate and feel very strongly about their team, so any decisions made against them are often seen as the wrong one.
A lot of the time, VAR is not given credit for the decisions it makes, but instead undermined by people who are unhappy with the decisions due to their bias toward the team they follow.
This can lead to a view of VAR being a negative, leading to arguments and debates on the subject, where fans of teams who have had more decisions against them hate it and fans who haven’t experienced it don’t, ultimately ending in controversy.
As well as this, decisions in football are very subjective, especially the likes of fouls, penalties, and cards.
This makes it hard to make the correct decision every time and means less people are left satisfied with the outcome of it.
Since VAR has been introduced into the beautiful game, it has no doubt changed it, both positively and negatively.
However, due to the nature of football fans, it seems unlikely that the controversy will ever end.
And the question of VAR being good or bad will always remain.
