Why Does It Take Seven People To Get It Wrong?

Last night I watched another controversial VAR decision.

Or perhaps I should say I watched seven people spend several minutes trying to make a controversial VAR decision.

When I first started watching football, there was one referee and two linesmen.

That was it.

Three people.

The referee ran around for ninety minutes trying to keep up with play while twenty-two footballers did their best to convince him that every decision should go their way.

Sometimes he got things wrong.

In fact, quite often he got things wrong.

But at least he got them wrong quickly.

Then football decided what it really needed was more officials.

The linesmen became assistant referees.

A fourth official appeared on the touchline holding up electronic boards and looking permanently concerned.

For a while we even had extra officials standing behind the goals. I never entirely worked out what they were supposed to do, although they always looked very busy.

Now we have the referee, two assistant referees, a fourth official, a VAR, an assistant VAR and a replay operator sitting somewhere hundreds of miles away surrounded by television screens.

That’s seven people.

Seven.

Most family weddings aren’t organised by seven people.

And yet somehow we still end up arguing about the decisions.

The original sales pitch for VAR was that it would eliminate mistakes.

Instead it seems to have created a new category.

Mistakes with a production budget.

We stop the game.

We draw lines.

We zoom in.

We slow everything down to the point where a tackle resembles a nature documentary.

Then after several minutes of analysis, half the stadium thinks it’s a penalty and the other half thinks it’s a scandal.

In other words, exactly where we started.

The truth is that referees are human.

They always have been.

The difference is that in the old days a wrong decision took three seconds.

Now it takes three minutes and comes with graphics.

Mind you, football supporters aren’t entirely innocent.

For decades we spent every Saturday afternoon shouting that referees were blind.

Perhaps football looked at us and thought, “Fine. We’ll add another six officials.”

That’ll teach us.

The funny thing is that some of my happiest football memories involve arguing about decisions.

The debates in the pub.

The discussions on the way home.

The certainty that the referee had personally ruined your afternoon.

Those arguments were part of football.

Maybe the problem isn’t that referees occasionally get things wrong.

Maybe the problem is that we’ve convinced ourselves that football can ever be perfect.

And if seven people can’t agree on what happened, perhaps we should stop expecting them to.

Anyway, what do I know?

I’m just a grumpy old man.

Agree? Disagree? Tell me in the comments — the Grumpy Old Man can take it.