IFAB to Premier League: you’re using VAR wrong

While other leagues take time off for a Christmas break, fans of Premier League football have been treated to a feast with every club playing two matches in a week. There have been piles of goals in some matches, such as Manchester United’s 4-1 romp over Newcastle, and other matches have seen high drama, as when Wolves beat reigning champs Man City 3-2 on Friday. But over all of that a cloud has descended, as fans were treated to four matches per day on television they also got to see how often, and how incorrectly, officials in the Premier League are using VAR to make ridiculous offside calls.

In the aftermath of the week’s football and with a seemingly endless stream of extremely close offside calls changing the outcome of matches, two camps have developed: those who say that the laws of the game are broken and those who say that VAR is broken. All I’m here to say is that both camps are wrong.

There is nothing wrong with the offside law. It’s there to prevent goal-hangers and when applied properly it does its job. It’s not even that complicated a law, though there are plenty of jokes around about how to explain it to someone new to the game.

Equally, VAR itself – in other words, referees using video technology – is not broken. When the linesman missed a player yards offside against Arsenal earlier in the season, VAR stepped in and corrected the mistake. Simple, effective use to correct a glaring error. Everyone in the game wants that.

What we don’t want is a 3-minute delay after nearly every goal while officials use flawed video replay to see if a player’s toe is possibly offside. Not only does it ruin the game for the fans in the stands, it actually looks like referees are searching for reasons to rule off goals, rather than simply looking for glaring errors. The VAR officials absolutely shouldn’t be making calls of less than six inches because that is the margin of error.

First, the camera’s framerate, plus the speed at which players are running, means that one frame in either direction equals six inches of travel. That means that any offside call made this season by measuring an armpit or a toe could have been entirely the wrong call. One frame backward and the player is possibly well onside.

Second, the framerate problem also explains why there are often what seems like arbitrary decisions made by referees as to the moment the ball is played forward. The referees in the VAR booth are forced to decide which of three frames to pick for drawing their VAR lines. This is why sometimes we see the ball clearing the foot of the attacking player and why other times it’s just struck the foot.

We fans, the pundits, the announcers, and even the players and coaches have been bamboozled into believing that what we see on our screens is “black and white” evidence that, for example, Teemu Pukki was 3.4cms offside. Someone drew a line, “it’s inarguable,” some folks crow “offside is offside, you just hate technology”. But it’s not inarguable: 3.4cms – one stinking inch – is well within the six-inch margin of error.

That’s why it’s not a surprise that IFAB, FIFA’s governing body for the Laws of the Game, have taken the unusual stance of issuing a statement today telling the Premier League that they are using VAR incorrectly. Because the technology cannot definitively offer a ruling on offside IFAB is reminding the Premier League of their advice from earlier this season:

“Clear and obvious still remains – it’s an important principle. There should not be a lot of time spent to find something marginal. If something is not clear on the first sight, then it’s not obvious and it shouldn’t be considered. Looking at one camera angle is one thing but looking at 15, trying to find something that was potentially not even there, this was not the idea of the VAR principle. It should be clear and obvious.”

The technology will get better. Perhaps we will increase framerates or even better, there will be GPS locators on the players and the ball will be fitted with GPS and an accelerometer. But until the technology catches up, the Premier League and their match officials need to stop using VAR in a way that was never intended. They need to just use it to overturn clear and obvious errors.

Qq

Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/dec/30/var-should-only-be-used-for-clear-and-obvious-offside-errors-say-law-makers

19 comments

  1. Best thing I’ve seen written on VAR anywhere. Nothing to add really.

    Except that I’m perplexed that premier league referees needed to be told this.

    1. Are you really? I honestly think something is up with the PL refs. And by UP I mean “either they are unintentionally a collection of the dumbest people on earth or they are intentionally doing stuff with the laws of the game that is possibly criminal”.

      1. I think there’s merit in the incompetence theory but it’s probably as simple as they’re using “their” interpretation to hide behind. There may also be a slice of “look how smart we are being the most precise refereeing in global football” LOL

  2. Tottenham received a point versus Norwich yesterday by a geometrically devised horizontal dotted-line moved along an axis to determine offside based on an imperfect camera angle. Teemu Pukki’s (him, again) rotator-cuff was ruled to have broken that plane.

    PGMO (and Select Group Referees) seems to have devised their own subset of usage rules for VAR– based on their miffed-ness in having their referee’s on-pitch judgment questioned by tech. Certainly seem hell-bent on proving VAR is a bad idea.

    Apparently, if it isn’t a goal-scoring or penalty situation being questioned– VAR has no oversight in a match. Otherwise it should have surely been used on missed calls against both Guendouzi and Jorginho resulting in second bookings and a red for both. Plenty of stoppage time after each event to have hit the intercom and said ‘one moment please’. Neither were even close.

    The PL is a bystander. PGMO the culprits.

  3. VAR in its current form is an absolute passion killer. I’d almost rather do without it, much as you’d want correct decisions.
    The biggest joy in football is that delicious moment when the ball hits the back of the net.
    I find myself deliberately waiting for VAR to kick in before getting too excited.
    Even if they decide eventually that the goal should stand, the moment is lost.
    Where’s the fun in that?
    I’m tempted to make a sexual analogy, but probably best not to.

    1. This is exactly the biggest problem. Players and fans are standing around awkwardly waiting to celebrate. That’s not ok, particularly in such a low scoring sport.

  4. 100% with you on this. The offside law was never intended to be applied in millimeters or inches. And changing the law to say “a player must be 6 inches offside” won’t really work either, as there will still be questions as to whether the person was 5.5 or 6. It has to be something more like “clear and obvious”, and yes, it’s still going to be a judgement call. But that’s OK. What we have going on now is not OK.

  5. Great points Tim but I’m sure the six inches margin of error ,if adapted , would create just as much controversy as the existing VAR technique being used now.
    Not to mention all the six inch di#k jokes this would provoke( or is it just me?)

    This is probably the only positive to take from Arsenal being sh#t, we don’t need to worry about marginal offside calls, we ain’t going anywhere near trophies for a while.

    1. I’m not suggesting that we go to a 6 inch rule. I’m saying “the on-field linesmen need to make a call and VAR should be used only to fix clear and obvious errors”.

    2. “Clear and obvious still remains – it’s an important principle. ”

      Tim means that the 6 inch of margin makes the above principal all the more important.

      And yes, I think the refs are being deliberately incompetent. VAR is employed in a dumb manner so that the PL can get rid of it and go back the to the days of consistent referee inconsistency.

  6. I get that, but my sneaking suspicion is that linesmen guess half the time on close calls.
    Honestly, I don’t know what the answer is , but I share your frustration on this.

  7. The freezed images they are using to make these calls are so badly pixalated I am convinced they are simply guessing or making calls to fit whatever they want to happen.

  8. we have gone past game day 20 that’s x 10 games so 200 and not once has a referee used a pitchside monitor.
    The game that we loved the passion all gone.
    the mickey thomas goal in 89 would never have been so great if VAR had to check it..
    The Alan Smith on would have taken 5mins to decide if it actually glanced off his head.
    The game is dead now, but that’s what we all wanted apparently.

  9. Running the line is a lot more difficult than it looks. I’m amazed there aren’t more mistakes, bearing in mind the pace of the game.
    I think referee error isn’t really the major problem we’re all making it. Far more problematic is the fairly sterile atmosphere you get in grounds these days. Attending games isn’t the be all and end all anymore. Just witness the empty seats and remember that those seats are paid for in advance even if the fans don’t attend the game. That speaks volumes.

  10. I’m thinking this happens way too often and affects a game where money runs through every nook & cranny that Tim’s second possibility should not be ruled out without investigation. Surely clear and obvious should be clear and obvious and these professionals should not need to be told

    1. I’m inclined to believe that there’s a lot of decisions being made for dishonest reasons.
      If it wasn’t already suspicious that premier league refs are expected to sign confidentially contracts that forbid them from disclosing any potentially criminal or underhanded shenanigans going on in the system after they leave, there’s the fact that one of the most high profile refs in English football came out a while back saying how in the ‘title deciding’ match between Spurs and Chelsea, he purposefully didn’t send off Spurs players for red card offenses because he didn’t want them to use that as a reason for their eventual loss……

      ….and that incredible revelation wasn’t even considered a scandal worth investigating by the premier league or the referees.

      I just don’t believe the premier league isn’t corrupt to it’s core.

  11. Agree, the current usage of VAR in the PL is either due to extreme stupidity or willful sabotage. It plays out as pseudo- science in their hands.
    In the Bundesliga it is used primarily for handball decisions.

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