A&H

JAM ITA penalty mess

Hi
For many years there has been umpteen situations of complaint about decisions being missed and changing games. Lampard's no goal v Germany, Thierry Henry handball. Mendes no goal at Old Trfford are just a few.
So the game succumbed to pressure to introduce technology like most if not all other sports. VAR is in its infancy and I have no doubt it will be changed in the years ahead.
On this movement by the GK here there is no AR in the regular penalty position. She is stood at the corner flag so one would assume that the kick decisions are being monitored by technology? The fact is that the GK clearly moved off the line in a blatant way. Maybe without technology it might have been ignored as it has been for a long time.
Interestingly there has been little if any complaints about the decisions themselves, just about how they got to the decision. Maybe a few handball calls are questionable yet that is debatable anyway with or without VAR.
In this instance I think that an AR should be in the normal position flagging for encroachment. I flagged one recently and it was retaken immediately not without complaint I might add. The GK was fuming saying he was on the line yet he was three yards off it! GKs will soon get the message that encroachment on a save will get pulled with VAR.
In this instance an AR in the normal position would have picked it up immediately and flagged knowing that technology can back up the decision. Even to show that she got it wrong not to flag! That's a learning point for FIFA in the management of penalties.
There are plenty of other learning points such as management of pulling and pushing at free kicks and corners. Penalty awarded in the Thailand game for pulling down an opponent that probably would have been ignored in the past. Refs have to stop these endless instructions to players with VAR present. A few VAR awarded penalties and it will start to come to an end.

My complaint or gripe is that they are picking up some relatively minor things, like the penalty in the Portugal game in the Nations League that took many, many views to work out whether there was any contact, but totally ignoring other things such as a player nearly removing an opponent's head from her shoulders with a head high boot. The lack of a red card on the latter was much more of a clear and obvious error than the lack of a penalty on the former, and no one seems to know when VAR will get involved.
 
The Referee Store
But at least now we can use VR to catch those cheating GKs who are 2 inches off the line and properly take a re-kick and caution those evil keepers!

But maybe it’s just part of the plot to get more goals—make sure no one wants to be a keeper, the quality of keepers will decline, and we’ll get more goals....
 
Having been to 3 cup finals with VAR and several champions league games my reaction to goals has 100% changed, and I don't like it.

VAR as an idea, great

VAR as it's implemented at the moment, awful
Could not agree more. I’m a Premier League season ticket holder so have seen it in operation for a few cup games. You definitely celebrate less when a goal is scored now if it looks marginal as to offside etc. Part of what sets football apart from other (admittedly far higher scoring) sports is the sheer release of emotion when a goal is scored so we should be careful before merely dismissing the effect VAR will have on that.

Think they need to introduce a time limit for decisions, and I include even objective decisions such as offside for that. If a decision cannot be made in a minute (for example) then stick with the referee’s on field decision.

I also think the system used in the FA Cup (VAR makes the call rather than referee reviewing on a monitor) works far better.

Having originally been a fan, I think that it has been poorly implemented until now.
 
I also think the system used in the FA Cup (VAR makes the call rather than referee reviewing on a monitor) works far better.

So as a referee you don't see the problem of the VAR telling the referee to give the match winning PK and then the referee watching it afterwards and deciding that he didn't think it was a PK?
 
So as a referee you don't see the problem of the VAR telling the referee to give the match winning PK and then the referee watching it afterwards and deciding that he didn't think it was a PK?

Worked quite well in the FA Cup and decisions were made far more quickly.
 
Find the FA threads here and you'd be surprised by the amount of complaints made.
Fair enough.

I just don’t think the system works particularly well.

As my dad said this morning we could have people missing the last train home for night games if referees are going to be expected to run over to a monitor and spend 2-3 minutes watching an incident multiple times a game.

The thing that gets me about VAR is that it seems to have been implemented without thinking about the impact on people who attend the matches. Although I think I saw that they will show replays on big screens at grounds in the Premier League which is a positive step.
 
I love how it always becomes 2 or 3 minutes the referee spends at the monitor when it's less than 30 seconds most of the time.
 
I love how it always becomes 2 or 3 minutes the referee spends at the monitor when it's less than 30 seconds most of the time.

Is it not valid as someone who attends football and loves it partly because of the flow of the game to worry how VAR will affect that.

As said the principal is good but it’s perfectly alright to worry about the time taken. I’ve seen games at the World Cup (both women’s this year and men’s last year) which have had long amounts of additional time when there have been no injuries.
 
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I love how it always becomes 2 or 3 minutes the referee spends at the monitor when it's less than 30 seconds most of the time.
It works both ways. The VAR accuracy % and amount of time delays reported by FIFA for men's world cup were so ridicules that even the VAR supporters didn't believe them. :)
 
The thing that gets me about VAR is that it seems to have been implemented without thinking about the impact on people who attend the matches.
Since when do we implement the laws of the game based on what the spectators want?
 
It’s happened again, but this time seemingly incorrectly! France v Nigeria last night

Penalty taker hits the post and it’s retaken as the keeper came off the line. However, the striker missed without keeper intervention
 
It’s happened again, but this time seemingly incorrectly! France v Nigeria last night

Penalty taker hits the post and it’s retaken as the keeper came off the line. However, the striker missed without keeper intervention

The law doesn't distinguish between a save and a miss. The ball enters the goal or it doesn't.
 

That document is from April 2017. Here's what the 2019/20 Laws of the Game say.

The categories of decision/incident which may be reviewed in the event of a potential ‘clear and obvious error’ or ‘serious missed incident’ are:
...
• offence by goalkeeper and/or kicker at the taking of a penalty kick or encroachment by an attacker or defender who becomes directly involved in play if the penalty kick

And using law 14, it's an offence for the GK to have both feet off the line when a PK is taken and the ball doesn't enter the goal. The 'directly involved with play' clause applies to the 20 players who are not the kick taker and goalkeeper.
 
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