Don’t get rid of VAR!

The Premier League’s 20 football clubs will vote tomorrow on whether to scrap video assistant referee (VAR) technology. Five years ago, when it was first introduced, VAR was heralded as a foolproof system. Sneaky handballs, unfair red cards, onside-offside mix-ups: all would be gone. The refereeing would be perfect. But, even after five years, VAR is still too slow and its decision-making too opaque. It’s wrong, too. There have been around 20 game-changing errors every season since its introduction. Football can’t continue in this state.

Wolverhampton Wanderers forced the vote, claiming VAR had ‘damaged the relationship between football and fans’. They’re right. VAR ruins the spontaneity of goal celebrations and slows down the game. Matches are routinely stopped for several minutes as officials struggle to reach a verdict. It’s no surprise that, following the introduction of VAR, match time added at the end of games has increased to, at times, a ridiculous 11 and a half minutes.