Football was my first love
And it will be my last…
Football of the future
And football of the paaaaast

That was a pop song in nineteen something or other. Terrible bleedin’ song, so I changed the lyric a touch due to ‘artistic freedom’. Yet the sentiment is true. Football was my ‘first love’ and yet now that love is waning. Nothing to do with Spurs awful season so far… ok, everything to do with Spurs awful season so far, lying 11th in the table, just behind West Ham, Bournemouth and Sheffield United (per-lease!). We’re so bad even Manchester United sit above us in the table. Even Arsenal! And they’re really terrible. So terrible that their captain stormed off the pitch yesterday, ripping off his shirt. The dreaded ‘disrespect!!!’ which is a massive red line in the beautiful game. You can racially abuse players, you can dive and cheat and commit common assault, but you CANNOT DISRESPECT THE SHIRT!

I blame VAR. For EVERYTHING. As soon as they started with Video Assistant Referees everything went to shit. Brexit got scuppered, Trump pulled his troops out of northern Syria, the pound crashed against the dollar, lorryloads of poor Vietnamese died in Essex and the Northern Line suffered delays to Morden. All because of VA-fucking-R.

This is what happens in rugby, a well-organised, intensely regulated game with a million rules, most of which prevent death, some of which are involved in scoring ‘goals’. A decision occurs on the pitch. The referee is unsure so calls on the VAR. But he does so over the ground’s PA system, telling the ‘man watching the telly’ exactly what he should look for. The replays are then shown, as the VAR watches them, on the ground’s screens, so everyone can see what he’s looking at and the different angles and is ‘there’ with the judgment. Which is then unarguable. Everyone’s seen it, everyone knows that, the number 7 was offside in the ruck, that the tackle was high, that the ball wasn’t grounded. And the referee announces his verdict to all. Publicly.

This is what happens in football. An incident happens, 22 players crowd the referee pushing and shoving him until he makes the dreaded ‘VAR’ signal. And then all is silent, all is quiet, no-one knows what’s being done or why nor is privy to the replays. The referee CAN go to the sideline and see them but often doesn’t. Simply trusting the VAR to decide for him. Even though many of the rules in football are ambiguous and the technology struggles with offside decisions. The fans can send a few text messages while they’re waiting. Have a game of chess. Go to the toilet. Then the decision is given to the ref and he just points to one spot (penalty, free-kick, GOAL!) and the game continues. It’s stupid, its opaque and its downright rude to the 45,000 people sitting there having paid a king’s ransom to watch their beautiful game stopped, stuttered and ruined by a new and poorly thought-out system.

Delays. They happen. BUT TELL THE PEOPLE WHY. Same at airports, there’s never any information. So the Premier League adopted the RyanAir model for their VAR rather than the slightly more relevant rugby version.

Spurs played Liverpool. VAR wasn’t involved. Didn’t need to be. It’s a tried and tested formula. Mo Salah scores a penalty and we lose.

It’s almost enough to make you redirect some of that love to your husband/wife!

Happy Monday

A xxxx