Watching a game of football is a paranoid affair. Fans are being conditioned not to get ‘too excited' when their team bags a last gasp winner, for fear that it will be stripped away from them over the sake of a millimetre or two.
I don’t think this has been a healthy change to the game that we’ve all come to love and hate in equal measures. There is now an intangible feeling of paranoia that has etched its way into the football psych over the past 3 years, as the video assisted refereeing technology is applied in a manner that punishes the fan.
The application of the offside law in particular is a huge problem for many of us. It has been widely referenced by Football’s law makers, that VAR should be used to correct clear and obvious errors that are made on the pitch. Consistently this season, that hasn’t been the case. Attackers are scrutinised to the length of a toe-nail or the strand of a hair in order to find a justification to rule out a goal.
The benefit of the doubt should always be with the attacking team. In doing so, you make sure the game is a more enjoyable spectacle. From the outside looking in, it appears officials in Stockley Park search desperately for ambiguity, and this simply isn’t in the spirit of the game.
So how to fix an issue like this? The blueprint for change, as it so often does, lies in the Netherlands. They use a margin for error for every assistant referee’s call, to avoid instances when, for example, someone’s armpit can rule them offside. Utilising VAR effectively, they opt to use 5cm wide lines on the screen rather ultra-thin stick ones that the Premier League persists with. If the lines are touching, VAR will not intervene, providing a 10cm margin of error for the on-field decision. In short, if its borderline – the on field decision remains final.
By using this method cases like Ollie Watkins’ offside ruling last week in Villa’s 2-1 defeat to West Ham, simply wouldn’t exist. In this case, his upper arm was fractionally offside before he tucked home a well-worked and deserved equaliser. Not only this, but this discretion occurred in an attempt to get away from Angelo Ogbonna, who was holding him back. It took about two and a half minutes for the goal to be disallowed, while the referees' body later said it was not a penalty because the foul was not a clear and obvious error.
BBC Sport’s text commentary seemed to capture the sentiment well that day: “In 1876 they brought in the offside law to stop some guy playing up front for the Royal Engineers from goalhanging, now they’re drawing lines on Ollie Watkins’ toenails.”
Tottenham, Wolves, Man City and West Brom have had a combined 7 points dropped at the mercy of the VAR-review. Liverpool have dropped 6 points.
In October, the Reds’ skipper Jordan Henderson’s injury-time winner was chalked off because of a marginal offside from Sadio Mane in the build-up. Marginal being generous as it wasn’t obvious even with lines depicted exactly what part of Mane’s body was ruled offside or when precisely the ball was played.
The ability for VAR officials to make these types of offside calls with pin-point accuracy every time is debatable to say the least. We understand, that getting the right decision is important, but at what cost?
Initially, when VAR came in for offside decisions there was a mystery to it. An added element of surprise, which for some-time meshed with the tribal desire to mock the misfortune of rival fans. Think Sterling in the build-up to Man City’s famous non equalizer in the 2019 Champions League quarter-final with Spurs. We’ve now hit a point though, where everyone has been stung by it too many times to point fingers at other clubs. We are now pointing at the Premier League and finally highlighting widespread misapplication for what it is on social media.
The use of VAR for potential off sides, is the greatest onset of footballing anxiety that has existed for a long time. While the motive to get the most accurate decision might be admirable, the means to do it is hurting the fans. Naturally, we are addicts. Craving the feeling of a last minute winner that you can’t find anywhere else but a football pitch. The nagging thought-process of “calm down, wait for VAR” is such a sad state of paranoia to experience. It cannot be understated how much this steals from the match-day experience.
Sadly, fan opinion seems to be lowest on the ladder of concerns for footballing decision-makers. If not the fans, listening to the professionals actively participating on a weekly basis, might be the best way the Premier League can move past this tirade of confusion and non-transparency around the offside law and its application.
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