GOM World Cup Diary #23 – Whatever Happened To Certainty?
Portugal eventually overcame Croatia last night to book their place in the World Cup quarter-finals.
But once again, the biggest talking point wasn’t the football.
It was VAR.
We were promised that technology would remove the controversial decisions.
It would eliminate the obvious mistakes.
Football, we were told, would finally get the big calls right.
Yet here we are.
Still arguing.
Which got me thinking.
Whatever happened to certainty?
I can still remember when the referee made a decision, the crowd roared their approval or disapproval, and everyone spent the journey home telling each other why he’d got it wrong.
By the following morning we’d moved on.
Nowadays we spend three or four minutes watching officials draw coloured lines across a television screen before reaching a decision.
Then we spend the journey home arguing about exactly the same thing.
I’m not entirely convinced that’s progress.
Perhaps the problem isn’t VAR.
Perhaps it’s the belief that football can ever be perfect.
The game is played by human beings.
It’s refereed by human beings.
It’s watched by millions of human beings.
And the funny thing about humans is that we rarely all agree.
Life isn’t much different.
We seem to believe there’s a perfect answer to everything.
The perfect holiday.
The perfect job.
The perfect investment.
The perfect football decision.
The older I get, the more I realise that life is usually a series of good judgements rather than perfect ones.
Sometimes you get them right.
Sometimes you don’t.
That’s simply part of being human.
Of course, I say all this as someone who’s quite happy to rewind the television three times just to prove the referee was wrong.
Apparently, I’m perfectly capable of embracing technology when it supports my own argument.
Funny how that works.
Perhaps the Football Gods are having the last laugh again.
They’ve given us all the cameras, computers and slow-motion replays we could ever want.
And we’re still arguing.
Maybe that’s because football was never meant to provide certainty.
It was meant to provide conversation.
Anyway, what do I know?
I’m just a grumpy old man.
Is it just me or are you as frustrated with VAR as me? Please tell me I am not the only one in the comments below!
