VAR. It's the future - I've tasted it!

VAR is only new in football, but there's already been a lot of opposition to it

Football in England is a funny old contradictory soup. We get to unprecedented levels of mania when the national team scrape a 1-0 win over Angola in the first game of the World Cup, then splutter and curse at our useless players as they get dumped out in the first knockout round. We want our clubs to have the best players in the world, then point out the lack of young English players being given a chance. We want an end to fixture congestion, but scrapping FA Cup replays is out of the question. We want to keep up with the supremacy of the top European teams but, rubbish the idea of a winter break. We want our cake, we damn well want to eat it, and we have no time for anyone who dares to suggest we compromise.

The latest example of this sneering dichotomy is the reaction to VAR. That's Video Assisted Refereeing for the uninitiated. A group of officials watch the game, with the aid of differing angles and replays. If the referee is deemed to have made an incorrect decision, they can discuss that with him, and possibly overturn it. Pretty grand idea, huh! Unfortunately, its introduction this season has illustrated a couple of long-standing issues within English football. From the outset, there has been criticism from all levels of the game over the use of VAR. Fans, players, managers and owners have all spoke out against the technology. It has been labelled a "shambles" by the media. It's seen as slow, pointless and even reaching the wrong decision by it's detractors. But dig a little deeper into the reasoning, and there's very little to base these objections on. Aside from the amount of time the decisions take, (which is about the same time that discussion between officials takes place anyway) there is no reasonable argument against the use of VAR. Yet the negative response keeps flooding through. Fans pour out luddist diatribes on Twitter and internet forums, lengthy mocking articles are written by self-important journalists, and ageing former players who somehow have a job as a pundit furrow their brows in consternation. All in response to this heinous affront to their beautiful game of inconsistency, rule breaking and frustration. How dare they mess with it! This brings me to the first issue - Fear of change.

Football is a fiercely traditional sport, which is a huge draw for me as a fan. Decades-old customs form the blood, muscle and bones of clubs and fans alike. Think about the reaction to Hull City's owners attempts to change the club's name, or when Cardiff changed their home strip from blue to red. Think of Leeds United's recently ridiculed new club badge. Think of the generation-spanning rivalries between big clubs, the fans singing songs on the terraces written twice their lifetime ago. Fathers tell sons with wide-eyed nostalgia about promotions and cup wins in the 70's and 80's. Think of me, after a big night out, can of lager in hand, searching Youtube at 3am for highlights of Sheffield United's 1998 FA Cup run. Football is based on nostalgia, which is in turn rooted in its proud, sacred rites. We know what we like, and we do rather like it the way it is, thank you very much.

Do you believe these guys or a pundit that doesn't know the laws of the game?

Unfortunately, this attitude can cause a negative side effect, where the game is reluctant or even directly opposed to improvements. Some of this is justified. Take the ludicrous situation with the Checkatrade trophy, or the proposed introduction of Premier League B teams in the lower leagues, both poisonous ideas, both thoroughly rejected by all right-thinking football people. Some of it however, is not so constructive, as we have seen with VAR. Ever since even the notion of introducing video technology has been tabled, there has been a groundswell of opposition within the game. The claims against technology are numerous, but predictably flippant - It will sanitise football, it will slow down the pace of the game, it's unnecessary because decisions "balance out" throughout the course of the season. The worst is one of the most incredulous, that favoured old illogical chestnut that VAR will "stop discussion" between fans in pubs. Frankly, none of these preliminary objections warrant more than a cursory dismissal. They all cannot answer this - VAR can (and does) improve the rate of correct decisions in football. How is that a bad thing? When you consider the small problems it causes and weigh them up with the vast improvements it gives, it's hard to build even a basic logical argument against VAR. When you see how virtually every other sport has adopted technology, and used it to improve the quality of decisions and gameplay, it's a no-brainer. VAR is only going to improve football.

My second point is something I've been banging on about for years. Simply put, most people involved in football don't know the laws of the game as well as they think. Let's take a look at the most recent "controversy" levelled against VAR as an example of this - The decisions during the FA Cup replay between Tottenham Hotspur and Rochdale. This was one of the cup games elected for VAR, and there were 3 incidents that invited the use of the technology. The first was a goal scored by Erik Lamela, that on VAR review was disallowed. The reason it was disallowed was cut and shut - Lamela had fouled Harrison McGahey in the build up to the goal, by impeding him with a shirt-pull - This is something that is explicitly forbidden in the laws of football, and is absolutely the kind of event VAR should be used for. Hard to spot in real time, but unequivocal when reviewed.

Sorry lads, it's a foul for me

The second was a correction after referee Paul Tierney initially awarded a free kick to Spurs on the edge of Rochdale's penalty area. Upon VAR review, it was overturned and given as a penalty, as the foul had clearly taken place inside the penalty box. This was a totally inarguable decision, and was correctly upheld. The third time VAR was used was moments later, when Son stopped halfway through his run-up to take the penalty before burying the ball in the back of the net - Again, a foul, as clearly stated in the laws of the game. The goal was overturned, and the correct decision had been reached.

Any objection (and there were many) to these decisions has to ignore the laws of the game. If you want to sit and talk about how it's a soft foul Lamela committed, about how it's a daft rule about stopping in the run up to a penalty, then you can go right ahead and do it. But it doesn't alter the fact that they are the laws of the game, and they were broken. The three times VAR had been used, it had come to the correct decision. What is shambolic about that? The only two arguments that hold any water are the amount of time the decisions took to be made, and the fact that fans in the stadium had no indication of what was going on. These are both easily fixed, and are not a reflection on the quality of decisions made by VAR. They certainly cannot be used as arguments against the use of VAR.

Fans may be left in the dark for a few minutes, but it's worth the advantages VAR brings

The concern should be about the fact that the referee missed Erik Lamela's foul in real time. It should be about the fact that he didn't even see that a foul had been committed in the penalty box. The concern should be about the fact that Son, a professional football player competing at the highest level doesn't understand the rules around taking a penalty. But instead, the media chose to frame this as a laughable controversy, proof that VAR doesn't work, and thus provided further fuel to the already raging fire of ill-thought criticism levelled at technology that is doing exactly what it has been tasked to do, and more importantly is doing it well. The criticism in the media about VAR is all fluff. There is no solid argument in the media against VAR, because there is no solid argument against it full stop. No amount of Alan Shearer pissing blood about a penalty not being given for light contact (contact in the box is one of multiple conditions needed to award a penalty, but he doesn't seem to know or care about that) should sway you on the fact that VAR is the best thing to happen to football in a very long time.

Everyone wants football to be fairer. We can all agree that as fans we have felt the uniquely piquant sting of a huge decision going the wrong way in the opposing team's favour. The hot, rising anger of being cheated out of an honourable display because the officials cannot keep up with the pace of the game. Football needs technological assistance, just as other sports need it. Rugby is the closest sport to football that uses video refereeing and technology to aid decisions. It's a fast, team-based ball game, with multiple decisions a minute to be made, and it is no indictment on the officials of that sport that they sometimes get it wrong. Who wouldn't? They're only human, and they only get to see each event once, in real time, under an unimaginable amount of pressure. There's nothing wrong with admitting you can't keep consistent in that situation. Rugby has embraced technology, has used it to better the sport, and most importantly, for a game that stops and starts a lot already, it has not slowed down the pace of the game or fan enjoyment one bit. Football needs to pull it's head out of it's backside and do the same.