I hate VAR. It ruined what was arguable the greatest aspect of the sport. Soccer is defined by how difficult it is to score, so when it finally does happen the emotional release is massive from both fans and players. Now with VAR, there is far less excitement and the celebration is muted while we all wait and stare at a screen.
Our quest to make things "fair" is steadily ruining sports. Fans still complain, players still encircle the referee, calls are still missed, players still dive, managers still lose their minds on the sideline and fairness has not been achieved (nor will it ever).
I personally share the same philosophy with Big Ange: "I think I'm on record saying I've never really been a fan of [VAR] since it's come in, not for any other reason than I think it just really complicates areas of the game that I thought were pretty clear in the past. But, I can see at the same time why it was inevitable that technology would come in, but I guess we have to deal with it. The biggest problem I think we fail to grasp is that no form of technology is going to make the game errorless. We used to understand that errors were part of the game, including officiating errors. You know, you have to cop it sometimes, some people cop it better than others, but that was part of the game. The game is literally littered with historical refereeing decisions that weren't right, but we all accepted they weren't right and we all accepted that was part of the game because we're all human beings. But, I think people are under the misconception that VAR is going to be errorless. So much of are game isn't factual, it's down to interpretation and we're still human beings and going to make mistakes, the same way managers make mistakes and the same way players make mistakes. So, I think when you put such a high bar on something, invariably it's going to fail. So if people were thinking VAR was going to be something at some point that's perfect, that's never going to happen."
I also don't think replay has helped the majority of sports. I'd say the only two games that really made huge gains due to technology are tennis and cricket, which use a motion tracking system to make decisions. In these cases, there is no human interpretation or re-refereeing to argue, there is just data from a machine that produces a "yes" or "no" output. Similarly, the goal line technology that determines if a ball has crossed the line in soccer is rarely scrutinized and usually applauded. However, any replay system that involves another human reassessing the action will always be a lightening rod of criticism and will therefore not really improve the game.
