Dundee United were right to withdraw from the Scottish FA’s KMI (Key Match Incident) panel, but I’d like to see them go further and lead the charge to scrap VAR entirely.
Norwegian clubs have voted to do just that with Norsk Topfotball, which represents the 32 clubs in Norway’s top two divisions, voting to scrap VAR “as soon as possible”.
The Norwegian football federation, though, want to maintain and develop VAR and a vote in March will decide whether to show VAR the red card.
I think many fans in Scotland would like to see it scrapped too.
The entire system is irredeemably flawed because human decision-making will always be subjective.
United have expressed their concern over inconsistent interpretations of the laws of the game, but since no two incidents in any game will ever be exactly the same, we’ll never achieve absolute consistency no matter who the referee is or who is on the panel.
Re-refereeing a game with multiple views of different angles doesn’t change the ultimate subjective nature of decision making.
The entire concept of VAR is at odds with the free-flowing nature of football and it is beyond saving.
Not only does it rob fans and players of immediate spontaneity when a goal is scored, which is the very essence of football, it’s clear that subjective decisions are just that, no matter how many times a referee or a monitoring panel review them.
And frankly, now that VAR has allowed us to argue whether a player was offside by the width of a nose, it’s turning us as supporters into spoiled bairns arguing the toss over such ludicrous margins.
VAR has infantilised us and is sucking the joy out of football.
Our refereeing standards are grim, but I’d rather we worked harder to improve them, got foreign refs in, or simply accepted that occasionally even the best officials will make mistakes amid the stramash of a game.
Whatever we do, there’s no point in throwing good money after bad with further experimentation and investment in a system that has been a disaster for football.
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