Adjective
Certain to happen; unavoidable.
“it was inevitable that football fans would spend 621573 minutes waiting around for officials to make a decision using VAR”
^ I’m pretty sure I’ve used that correctly. My GCSE English was a long time ago now but Miss Johnson would be proud!
With a string of mistakes (IMO) recently, VAR is well and truly in the spotlight and is a big topic of conversation.
Headlines have been made again this week with a goal being given to Newcastle after ‘no conclusive evidence was available to VAR’, Mikel Arteta using words like ‘embarrassing’ and ‘disgrace’ in his post-match interview, Arsenal releasing a statement to back their manager, 5 goals ruled out during the Tottenham v Chelsea match, two red cards, the list goes on…
Following the Tottenham fixture, a very wise man pointed out the obvious:
“Decisions are decisions: you either accept it or you don’t. If we are going to go out and complain about bad decisions every week what will happen is what happened today: a forensic study of every decision. That’s the way the game is going. I don’t like it” – Ange Postecoglou
Has it gone too far? Should match officials really be scrutinized like they are?
Let’s not forget, before VAR was a thing, mistakes were made week in, week out. Yes, everyone got worked up about it but we moved on.
There are so many reasons why fans dislike VAR, so I thought I’d share some of my thoughts on it. But please do bear in mind, I’m just a girl in the stands (or watching tele at home) who is getting a little fed up with the whingin’, but equally loves the debate and discussions that bringing this up in conversation starts.
My first issue is with the energy and excitement it takes out of the game. The flow is just gone when you have a game with so much stop start.
When you’re sat on the couch listening to commentators give their opinions and you get to watch it over and over and over again and you can form your own opinion based on every angle, it’s not so bad, but standing in a stadium with no clue what’s going on waiting eagerly for the ref to blow the whistle and confirm the decision, well, it’s worse than ordering McNuggets and getting home to realise there’s only 8 in the box.
My second is the consistency. We can all look at incidents on the pitch and compare them to one a few weeks back where a different decision was made. It just doesn’t seem right that match officials aren’t aligned and it’s even harder to swallow when your team are the ones that are hard done to.
My third is the ‘rules in the game’. My problem isn’t exactly with the rules – it that we’re calling them rules when in reality its actually massively down to interpretation.
Anyway, I’m not going to go any further in to it but maybe I’ve got you thinking and maybe you’ve got something to say on this. Feel free to share your comments in the section below!