Referee Szymon Marciniak confronts Newcastle United assistant manager Jason Tindall after Ware persuaded him to award PSG a penalty. Mark Atkins/Getty Images
There are no greater expansionists in football law than those behind Ware, who view every mistake and imperfection as an invitation to seize more territory to control those who believe the game can and should be tamed by its technology.
This week Ifab, the global watchdog body, proposed expanding the technology's scope beyond the four core principles for which Var was launched in 2018. Now Ifab wants to control other aspects – free kicks, corners, stopwatch. yellow cards. This is precisely the kind of attitude one would expect from a governing body running an ideal system, but as we know, nothing could be further from the truth.
It was another grim week for Ware, this time in the Champions League, when none other than World Cup referee Szymon Marciniak was sent to the monitor in Paris and awarded a penalty that should never have been awarded. What happens to the actions of these officials during their lonely journey to the sideline? This seems to rob them of any confidence that they stand for what they themselves have witnessed at closer range than anyone else. Only a vanishingly small number of people looked at each other and remained with their original gaze.
Even the referee, who was so well respected that a year ago he was given the World Cup final without sticking to his original decision. Photo: Alain JOCARD/AFP
The penalty that Paris Saint-Germain scored against Newcastle United's Tino Livramento that night was a travesty. PSG may have deserved a draw for their dominance in the second half, but football is not about the sum of your misses or the expected goals rate. Ware failed again, playing smartly at one of UEFA's best officials. However, earlier that day, Ifab proposed expanding Var's powers.
The question to return to on these issues is the same question that was asked before video assistant referees were introduced: what exactly was Var supposed to do? According to the letter of Var's heavily rewritten protocol, this was to eliminate clear and obvious errors. It must have been a friend of the referee telling him that, for example, he had sent off the wrong Arsenal player in the Stamford Bridge incident in March 2014. Or that Thierry Henry had a handball in extra time at the Stade des Deux. France vs Ireland in 2009.
Simple questions that are rarely asked. Not a license to re-referee the game. “If I hear anyone say he won't call the game, I'm going to explode, man, because that's exactly what he does.” It was only possible to talk about this openly this week, speaking against Varista Ange Postecoglou. “This was meant to be clear and obvious, right?” he asked the room. “A clear and obvious mistake for me would be if all of us in this room saw something and said, 'This is definitely wrong.' At this point, it's about “the majority in this room saying this is wrong.”
“Var is a flawed method that is still trying to outwit itself”
This is the story of Var, a phenomenon that now works on the majority of votes, and often do not even get it. An imperfect method still trying to outdo itself. It was launched by mistake, and now that it can't be stopped, it wants to consume even more of the game.
This was always going to be limited to what the judiciary community likes to call factual errors. In short, the goal and the obvious: the ball is out of play. Foul inside or outside the penalty area. Correctly determining whether Kieran Gibbs or Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain is the culprit. Offside, although without the need to subjectively decide whether a player who is offside interferes or not.
Var should have been there to correct the mistakes of the officials' factual errors – such as when Andre Marriner sent off Kieran Gibbs when he should have given a red card to Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain – are not meant to aim for picky perfection. Photo: REUTERS/Eddie Keogh
This way, Var could start small, gain some trust, and move on from there. Instead, he shot to the stars and ended up demolishing a neighbor's garage. As was ably demonstrated on the very day the Ifab AGM tried to expand its powers, Var cannot cope with the powers it already has. Even on Tuesday evening, with the referee and Ware, to whom FIFA entrusted the World Cup final. But Ifab still wants Var to have more options in the game and believes it can do so without any further delays.
Nonsense, of course, because every rule change passed to Var just gives the game Var more options to check. A better policy would be to adjust the laws so that instead of expanding Var's role, they reduce it. Nowadays, War checks every goal for handball, intentional or not, in preparation or execution. He does this in order to prohibit it. If Alejandro Garnacho's brilliant overhead strike against Everton had inadvertently grazed the Manchester United teenager's fingernails without providing any advantage or changing its trajectory one degree, it would not have been counted.
Instead, lawmakers are seeking to respond to the pressure they feel from the game's televised reception. The Shin-bins propose to solve, among other things, the problem with those who disagree. But this does not allow us to foresee the consequences for a game in which there are no natural breaks, like rugby or other sports where there is a sin bin. Football needs simple laws that are easy to understand and quickly apply.
It must be said again that the problem was not the mistakes of officials, which have always existed in football since men called Cuthbert played it. in shoes better suited for mountain climbing. The problem is the technological progress of television, which was able to highlight these errors immediately and in detail – and the game succumbed to this pressure.
Frightened by the power of technology and the subsequent disapproval of what the game authorities believe these multiple camera angles and slow-motion replays will bring to the sports, they are looking to bring even more power to technology. As always, it's much better to concentrate on solving the simple problems, leaving everything else and accepting the game in its natural state – flaws and all.
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