It's Not VAR's Fault

It’s not VAR’s fault

One week it’s offside that takes a good kicking. The next, it’s the penalties.

For sure, VAR doesn’t end the debate, as witnessed this weekend just gone.

I don’t think Liverpool or Tottenham’s penalties should have been awarded. Salah, because the contact didn’t restrict his movement, didn’t impact on the game and certainly didn’t make him fall down. Kane, because when you see it again, you realise it is dangerous play on behalf of the Tottenham player.

VAR cannot be blamed for all the upset that’s going on at the moment – it’s the rules of the game and their implementation that’s the problem.

I have already argued that the offside rule needs changing to favour the attacker. Now I’m turning my ire on penalty decisions, penalties that are awarded when the attacking side have little chance of scoring. This happens on a regular basis. Last week it was the Sheffield United penalty.

I had Sheffield United down for 0.9 of a goal expectation against Liverpool, roughly translating to a probability of them not scoring at 0.4, so a 40% chance that they did not score a goal.

In one debatable touch they were given the opportunity to score. Was it a foul, was it inside or outside the box? Lots of discussion but what was the chance that Sheffield United scored from that attack? Bearing in mind that 40% of the time they’re not expected to score in a 90-minute timeslot I’d say the danger that existed on the edge of the Liverpool box was minimal yet resulted in a goal.

The rules need an overhaul. Football is a massively popular sport despite itself but could benefit from a serious review and not be too proud to borrow rules from other sports. The award of a penalty needs to be commensurate with the crime.

Maybe football authorities don’t want to consider a sport such as hockey but there are elements within it that could be applied successfully to football. It’s not perfect, never will be, nor should anyone want sport to be, but I believe it would create a better spectacle. Football fans don’t get great value out of the viewing experience.

You can have a long corner, a short corner or a penalty flick in hockey, the flick being awarded when you have denied a clear goal scoring opportunity, a short corner is when you have committed a less serious crime in the danger zone and a long corner when you put the ball out the back without intent. For the most part it works well because it considers the misdemeanour and has three ways of dealing with it instead of two.

There are green, yellow and red cards so players can be sin-binned for short sharp time periods or red-carded and this reflects the nature of the indiscretion. It’s not necessarily an all or nothing punishment but can be if the umpire so decides.

Not retreating 5 metres is an offence, so the player needs to move away and having committed the foul needs to allow the opposition to get on with the game. How players in football matches are allowed to kick the ball away or stand in front when somebody is about to take a free kick baffles me. I don’t see it anywhere in the rules so sometimes maybe rules don’t need changing, they just need implementing.

Then over to rugby where they stop the clock when the action comes to a halt. With the introduction of VAR there’s been a surge in injury time minutes for football. A three-minute delay for VAR never seems to translate to three extra minutes being added to the game. When players go down ‘injured’ towards the end of a game does the other team ever get all that time back?

In rugby, play continues at the end of the game until the team with the ball has lost that advantage. Implementing something like this would stop referees awarding a free kick and then blowing the whistle for full time when only the first phase of an attack has concluded but everybody would know how the game was going to be managed.