The Ref Stop

Improving VAR - Brainstorm

I come back to that VAR works much better in other countries, and was good at Euro 2020(1) and other tournaments. If technology isn't working you need to look at the people operating it, and the logical assumption there would be the referees, but we know some of the same referees that have made a compleye horlicks of it recently manage to use it fine in Europe. So you then have to look at their management, and that for me is where the problem lies, as I've said before it doesn't matter what industry you work in, if you manage a team of people that keep making glaring errors you can, and should, pay the ultimate price if you are unable to improve them.

Specific things I would look at to improve the current system ...
  • Let ARs flag early if they are sure it is offside, I can understand waiting if it is tight, but I refuse to believe that top flight ARs aren't sure when someone is 5 metres off.
  • Stop tinkering with guidance to the officials, that is causing more problems than anything related to the technology
  • Don't let the VAR and referee discuss what happened, rather if VAR think there was a clear and obvious error they should just tell the referee and recommend they look at the monitor. If the referee is happy with what they have given they should face no criticism or sanction for sticking with their original decision. In England at least, when a referee goes to look at the screen it is a fait accompli, and that isn't right.
I don't think a challenge system would work in football personally, and kind of negates what VAR is there for, to fix clear injusticies. Take Henry's handball as an example, by the time that happened Ireland might have used their 2 / 3 challenges and as a result the injustice still stands.
 
The Ref Stop
I also think assigning the same var to the referee would help. Assuming we establish at first base that they work well together. If nothing else, it might establish a trust, in tandem with a constistency.
of course numbers dictate that but thats for someone else to sort.

I refuse to believe its not unsettling to have a different eye in the sky from game to game, and when you consider the elite tend to officiate their european appointments in a team, follows suit this practise might be best practise at domestic level also.

The EPL/PGMOL whoever, should have resource to facilitate this.
 
RustyRef said:
I come back to that VAR works much better in other countries, and was good at Euro 2020(1) and other tournaments. If technology isn't working you need to look at the people operating it, and the logical assumption there would be the referees, but we know some of the same referees that have made a compleye horlicks of it recently manage to use it fine in Europe. So you then have to look at their management, and that for me is where the problem lies, as I've said before it doesn't matter what industry you work in, if you manage a team of people that keep making glaring errors you can, and should, pay the ultimate price if you are unable to improve them.

Specific things I would look at to improve the current system ...
  • Let ARs flag early if they are sure it is offside, I can understand waiting if it is tight, but I refuse to believe that top flight ARs aren't sure when someone is 5 metres off.
  • Stop tinkering with guidance to the officials, that is causing more problems than anything related to the technology
  • Don't let the VAR and referee discuss what happened, rather if VAR think there was a clear and obvious error they should just tell the referee and recommend they look at the monitor. If the referee is happy with what they have given they should face no criticism or sanction for sticking with their original decision. In England at least, when a referee goes to look at the screen it is a fait accompli, and that isn't right.
I don't think a challenge system would work in football personally, and kind of negates what VAR is there for, to fix clear injusticies. Take Henry's handball as an example, by the time that happened Ireland might have used their 2 / 3 challenges and as a result the injustice still stands.
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Good post
 
RustyRef said:
I don't think a challenge system would work in football personally, and kind of negates what VAR is there for, to fix clear injusticies. Take Henry's handball as an example, by the time that happened Ireland might have used their 2 / 3 challenges and as a result the injustice still stands.
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The other reason why a challenge system isn't tenable with football is the offside law.

Offside decisions play a critical role in the outcome of many, if not most games. I would say that 99.9% of the time no player, coach or manager is in a position to be able to make offside calls with any degree of accuracy whatsoever.
 
I actually think a challenge system would work well if it was utilised correctly.

It would ensure that VAR was being used to correct clear & obvious errors as a team wouldn’t want to waste a challenge on 50/50 decisions unless it was the last 10 mins and they were desperate.

You have to take offsides out of the challenge system though as @Peter Grove alludes to above. I’d like these to go back to the AR making the primary call though and VAR only getting involved if it can easily be corrected within 20-30 seconds without the need for lines etc.
If you can’t determine on/off within that time frame with replays then it’s not a clear and obvious error, on field decision stands.

The challenge could be made by Captain or Manager by asking a specific question the referee or 4th. I.E - can we check that for a foul on our number 6 in the build up please?
This would also avoid forensically checking every details of the build up. Again though, offsides would be checked as a matter of course for every goal/tight call but as a BACKUP to the AR rather than replacing them.

The only other aspect I’d like to see fall outside the challenge system would be off the ball cases of violent conduct/spitting. There’s no place in the game for this and anything that can help eradicate them is a positive!
 
I'm not buying the generalisation that VAR is any good outside the EPL
The MLS is likely an exception as VAR due to the cultural acceptance of it on tother side of pond. But whilst VAR might be better abroad to some degree, it's still pretty woeful on the whole from what I perceive. Although, I'm self-aware enough to know that my perception may not be entirely in-tune with reality. But I suspect that the majority of the football community would agree with my sentiment both at home and afar
 
Big Cat said:
I'm not buying the generalisation that VAR is any good outside the EPL
The MLS is likely an exception as VAR due to the cultural acceptance of it on tother side of pond. But whilst VAR might be better abroad to some degree, it's still pretty woeful on the whole from what I perceive. Although, I'm self-aware enough to know that my perception may not be entirely in-tune with reality. But I suspect that the majority of the football community would agree with my sentiment both at home and afar
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VAR is generally considered to be good in the CL, Europa and international competitions - where the very best referees and VAR are the ones using it, also coincidentally under better UEFA/FIFA guidelines that are tinkered with less.

You're absolutely right to say it still has a lot of the same problems when used in domestic leagues in other countries.
 
Peter Grove said:
The other reason why a challenge system isn't tenable with football is the offside law.

Offside decisions play a critical role in the outcome of many, if not most games. I would say that 99.9% of the time no player, coach or manager is in a position to be able to make offside calls with any degree of accuracy whatsoever.
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Offside position determination will be automated at the World Cup and will probably be adopted in leagues for the 23-24.
No need for reviews for offside, cricket uses team reviews but no ball checks don't require a team to use one.
 
Anyway, to answer the actual question, I think you have two real options:

1. Do what rugby does. And I mean 100% all-in: stop the clock, allow it to be initiated on-field or from the booth, show/broadcast the discussion in the stadium and on TV, allow for "I can't see any conclusive evidence to change the decision" conclusions and make it mandatory to explain the final decision to both captains. Still genuinely baffles me that this isn't what they did in the first place, but I'm worried any attempt now to make the system more "rugby-like" will only half-arse it and therefore not really solve any problems.

2. Challenge system. A lot of the issues people have with this I think are non-issues once teams learn to use the challenges properly - and as is often the case in Cricket, as you get correct challenges back, running out of challenges is generally considered a failure of captaincy rather than of refereeing. If you want to waste them on 50:50 throw-in's on the half way line then be my guest - it won't take long for teams to realise this is a terrible idea! You'd need to come up with some rules about when the challenge must be called for and if/when you stop play for it, but I imagine something along the lines of the current VAR system would work for that - allow a background "check" to see if the challenge has merit, then stop play/delay the restart if referee intervention is needed.

Offside is an issue for any VAR system, but I think the semi-automated offside we're going to see soon will help with that a lot - should stop the "delay" requirement, which will make everyone a lot happier. I'm long past being sick of being told that "someone will get hurt one day" due to AR's playing on, and intrigued to see if that has actually ever happened.
 
GraemeS said:
Anyway, to answer the actual question, I think you have two real options:

1. Do what rugby does. And I mean 100% all-in: stop the clock, allow it to be initiated on-field or from the booth, show/broadcast the discussion in the stadium and on TV, allow for "I can't see any conclusive evidence to change the decision" conclusions and make it mandatory to explain the final decision to both captains. Still genuinely baffles me that this isn't what they did in the first place, but I'm worried any attempt now to make the system more "rugby-like" will only half-arse it and therefore not really solve any problems.

2. Challenge system. A lot of the issues people have with this I think are non-issues once teams learn to use the challenges properly - and as is often the case in Cricket, as you get correct challenges back, running out of challenges is generally considered a failure of captaincy rather than of refereeing. If you want to waste them on 50:50 throw-in's on the half way line then be my guest - it won't take long for teams to realise this is a terrible idea! You'd need to come up with some rules about when the challenge must be called for and if/when you stop play for it, but I imagine something along the lines of the current VAR system would work for that - allow a background "check" to see if the challenge has merit, then stop play/delay the restart if referee intervention is needed.

Offside is an issue for any VAR system, but I think the semi-automated offside we're going to see soon will help with that a lot - should stop the "delay" requirement, which will make everyone a lot happier. I'm long past being sick of being told that "someone will get hurt one day" due to AR's playing on, and intrigued to see if that has actually ever happened.
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I'm sure that it HAS happened, saw it on MOTD - a year ago perhaps - bit vague I know but that's old age for you! :p
 
PinnerPaul said:
I'm sure that it HAS happened, saw it on MOTD - a year ago perhaps - bit vague I know but that's old age for you! :p
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I know I've seen incidents attributed to the delay but wrongly so - where the collision/injury has happened because of an AR waiting for a player to become active. But I don't think I've actually seen it happen due to an AR "delaying" because of VAR and it being a close call.
 
What players do with their own limbs is still their own responsibility, flag going up or not.
 
Max2 said:
What players do with their own limbs is still their own responsibility, flag going up or not.
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i dont think that's the point though. IMO ARs should be flagging for anything but tight offsides, if play continues you get players making last ditch challenges to try and score / stop a goal which inevitably lead to injuries. if ARs simply flagged instead those situations could be avoided
 
es1 said:
i dont think that's the point though. IMO ARs should be flagging for anything but tight offsides, if play continues you get players making last ditch challenges to try and score / stop a goal which inevitably lead to injuries. if ARs simply flagged instead those situations could be avoided
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No IMO required, that's exactly the current procedure. The point is, the PL seem to accept a wider margin on what is "close" than is written in the protocol - that's not a VAR issue, that's a "train your AR's better" issue.

And "inevitably lead to injuries"? Again, we've had a few people discuss it and can maaaaaaybe think of one example in the last few years of VAR - that's not anywhere near as big a factor as is constantly made out by commentators. If players were breaking legs every week then you'd have a point, but (like the "It ruins the atmosphere" argument IMO), this is a nothing issue that's blown massively out of proportion by people who aren't approaching the discussion with an open mind.
 
i think it's just a general frustration with letting play continue where everyone knows it's offside, this leads to dissent from players and abuse from the crowd which is easily avoided, as you suggest, but better training and implementation
 
es1 said:
i think it's just a general frustration with letting play continue where everyone knows it's offside, this leads to dissent from players and abuse from the crowd which is easily avoided, as you suggest, but better training and implementation
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I don't have much sympathy for "X leads to dissent" arguments. If X is the correct decision, then use the tools you have to deal with the dissent. And if it's the wrong decision, then do the same but also, get the decision right next time!

As I said in my big post, I think it's hard to make any big calls on VAR offside until we see how this semi-automated system works. In theory, it should fix a lot of the issues raised here, which means any adjustments to VAR that are trying to work around current problems are a bit of a waste of time to discuss at this point unfortunately.
 
GraemeS said:
I don't have much sympathy for "X leads to dissent" arguments. If X is the correct decision, then use the tools you have to deal with the dissent. And if it's the wrong decision, then do the same but also, get the decision right next time!

As I said in my big post, I think it's hard to make any big calls on VAR offside until we see how this semi-automated system works. In theory, it should fix a lot of the issues raised here, which means any adjustments to VAR that are trying to work around current problems are a bit of a waste of time to discuss at this point unfortunately.
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i see where you're coming from, but in the pro game it's a red flag to a bull imo, get the flag up asap unless it's tight etc

this new semi-automated system could be the answer for sure, hopefully
 
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