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Here’s the problem with VAR: it’s great when it works in favor of your team, but if the decision goes the other way then it’s ruining the game and offers further evidence that football is now controlled by heartless robots.
Just ask Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta. One minute he rages against it and the next he is celebrating the video assistant referee’s call to award a foul on goalkeeper David Raya in the Gunners’ 1-0 win at West Ham United on Sunday, which helped put his team with touching distance of the Premier League title.
If you ever wanted an example of the hypocrisy toward VAR — a system that was introduced almost a decade ago not to end controversy in the game, but to make sure the big decisions are ultimately correct — Arteta is the embodiment of how football wants it both ways.
Less than two weeks ago, Arteta was “incredibly fuming” over referee Danny Makkelie’s decision to overturn his initial penalty decision in Arsenal’s UEFA Champions League semifinal first-leg clash against Atlético Madrid because, after a VAR review, the Dutch official accepted that Atlético defender Dávid Hancko did not foul Eberechi Eze in the penalty area.
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The slow-motion replay showed no contact by Hancko, with Eze falling to the ground in anticipation of a foul, but Arteta reported he was “fuming” because Makkelie watched it “13 times” before making his decision.
Still, Makkelie got there in the end, with the whole process taking three minutes and 20 seconds. It was a huge game with massive significance for both sides — reaching a Champions League final can be a career-defining moment for players and coaches — and VAR played the key role in the right decision being made.
The same happened at the London Stadium on Sunday, although you won’t find a West Ham supporter who thinks so. Six minutes into stoppage time, with Arsenal 1-0 up, Callum Wilson scored a goal after a scramble in the box which looked set to throw West Ham a lifeline in their battle against relegation and potentially derail Arsenal’s title challenge.
But because every goal is now reviewed and scrutinized by VAR to ensure its legality, and despite referee Chris Kavanagh initially awarding the goal, VAR official Darren England recommended an on-field review due to a possible foul on Arsenal goalkeeper Raya by West Ham forward Pablo.
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Pablo had his left arm across Raya’s chest, while his left hand was holding the keeper’s wrist, so (with the whole process taking four minutes 11 seconds) Kavanagh made the right call to overturn his initial decision and disallow the goal.
But guess what? After complaining about the referee taking too long to make the right decision when overturning an Arsenal penalty against Atlético, Arteta praised Kavanagh after the game, saying: “Congratulations, because they [officials] made a big call in very, very difficult circumstances.”
West Ham captain Jarrod Bowen had a different view, however. “When you look at the screen for five minutes you’ll find something — a lot of grappling and a lot of holding,” he reported. “Do I think it’s the right decision? No.”
Meanwhile, amid a host of commentary from other ex-players and managers, former Manchester United and England captain Wayne Rooney offered an impartial view on his podcast, “The Wayne Rooney Show,” saying: “It’s a clear foul. It’s the one time I actually think VAR has done a really good job in such an important game.”
The “problem” with VAR is that, when it is used correctly, it gets virtually every decision right because the letter of the law is applied. Pre-VAR, the Arsenal penalty at Atlético would have stood, and Wilson’s goal would have led to a 1-1 draw on Sunday … and both decisions would have been wrong.
Janusz Michallik reacts to the decision to overturn Callum Wilson’s equaliser for West Ham vs. Arsenal.
But football is now too big a business for a referee and two assistants to have all the responsibility on their shoulders.
Diego Maradona’s ‘Hand of God” goal for Argentina against England at the 1986 World Cup is perhaps the most infamous example of referees getting a big call wrong, but that wouldn’t happen now thanks to VAR; neither would Thierry Henry’s blatant handball which led to a decisive goal in France’s World Cup playoff win against Republic of Ireland in 2009.
VAR was introduced by FIFA in 2018 to banish those egregious mistakes to history and while that has happened, football now can’t handle the new reality of officials applying the law to get decisions right.
Of course, the inconsistency of human behavior means that some incidents will be reviewed and others won’t; mistakes continue to be made because one VAR will have a different threshold for intervention to another.
As an example, VAR Paul Tierney chose not to recommend an on-field review on the opening weekend of the season when Manchester United goalkeeper Altay Bayindir appeared to be fouled by Arsenal’s William Saliba when left back Riccardo Calafiori scored the only goal of the game in a 1-0 win at Old Trafford.
Tierney arguably made a mistake on that occasion — it was a subjective call — but England got it right on Sunday. And, although the eventual decision hurt relegation-threatened West Ham and title-chasing Manchester City, he did exactly what VAR was introduced to do: identify an infringement that led to a goal.
So when an official gets it wrong, go ahead and complain. But when the right outcome is reached thanks to VAR, isn’t that what everybody wanted in the first place?
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