I don't understand how they didn't give the goal in the Burnley v Bournemouth game. Will post link shortly. Don't get how they can't get this correct.

All replay in all sports should be banned forever

It works in most leagues. Not sure why it's so broken in EPL.

It has categorically made any sport that uses it worse to watch

Agthatbuilds said:

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It has categorically made any sport that uses it worse to watch

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I feel like the NFL has gotten better. They are much faster on calling things. Also it can just be really hard to have people in positions to see things like a knee hitting the ground or when the ball actually comes loose.

I disagree. It slows everything down. It's inconsistent. What they can and cannot review is dumb. Some of the biggest errors of thr last few years were not reviewable.

All that's happened is that game stake land we fans still ***** about the referees/var/review.

Just make the call and get over it

Your complaints are all valid, but we'd be far worse off without it.

We already know we wouldn't be, because we were for so long.

Agthatbuilds said:

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We already know we wouldn't be, because we were for so long.

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Some people will always find something to complain about. A good adage for this conversation.

Agthatbuilds said:

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We already know we wouldn't be, because we were for so long.

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Before social media and talking-heads. Before every game was televised.

For every bad review, there's far more that they get right. I promise you'd be incensed when bad live calls go uncorrected and then paraded around sports media endlessly. Lots of bad calls used to go unnoticed. Now everything is on display all the time.

It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it's what we need for the beast that sports entertainment has turned into. Hopefully they'll continue to improve it and address a lot of your complaints.

Overall, I'm glad we have replay review in sports. The way the EPL utilizes it is maddening.

deadbq03 said:

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It works in most leagues. Not sure why it's so broken in EPL.

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Because VAR officials would rather protect their colleagues on the field than making the right call.

The implementation of VAR is a positive thing.

It works well more than it doesn't. There have been many bad lapses since its implementation though. At least with the Prem, they try to be transparent with Howard Webb's segments where he reviews the controversial VAR calls. Webb is the "Chief Refereeing Office" of the Prem's official refereeing body. Outside of the Prem though, La Liga missed two big penalty calls for each of Bara and Real Madrid during the Clasico today: a foul on Araujo right before half-time and then Araujo's foul on Camavinga. They failed to even consult VAR on either challenges.

I'd much rather they fix VAR than get rid of it. Maybe you just don't know how hard it is until the pressure is on but it doesn't seem like it should an impossible job

Pathetic VAR decision once again against Burnley. Starting to get harder and harder to right this off as just bad officiating.

deadbq03 said:

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It works in most leagues. Not sure why it's so broken in EPL.

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Its because the refs doing the VAR are more concerned about the feelings of the refs on the field than getting it correct and also that the English are supreme sticklers for rules and regulations and therefore are also more interested in getting lost in the weeds of what "clear and obvious" means and other rhetorical conundrums while they should be concerned only with quickly fixing incorrect decisions.

Should only be a camera on the goal line for review at and that's it

The sport survived just fine without VAR for hundreds of years

I hate it as a spectator, but as a Serie A watcher, I can tell it slows down a lot of blatant cheating by the refs.
there was a time...it was atrocious. Now it seems the Italian refs are pretty level with the rest europe

Texas velvet maestro said:

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I hate it as a spectator, but as a Serie A watcher, I can tell it slows down a lot of blatant cheating by the refs.
there was a time...it was atrocious. Now it seems the Italian refs are pretty level with the rest europe

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I think in England it exposes it.

I am not generally a conspiracy theorist at all really. But it is the easiest explanation for what happened to Burnley today.

I feel like people who say that there should be no video review at all either weren't alive/aren't aware of legendarily horrible decisions that directly determined winners and losers to games (or very heavily influenced them) or are willfully blind to them.

Can you imagine the absolute riot that would ensue if a college football team won a game solely because they were given a 5th down to score a TD on the last play of the game? Like so many other things in life, it seems many have reached the conclusion that because Thing A has issues the only solution is to live in a world without Thing A without actually realizing or considering what that new world would look like. I think we can all respectfully disagree to the exact degree that video should or should not be applied but getting rid of it altogether in any form is nonsense.

Dre_00 said:

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Can you imagine the absolute riot that would ensue if a college football team won a game solely because they were given a 5th down to score a TD on the last play of the game?

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Or a team won a World Cup match because of a goal punched in by hand?

This is what I always say. Even at its worst (which sadly may be the EPL) VAR still gets far more right than wrong.

The reason folks are up in arms about VAR is ironically precisely why we need it. Every single blown live call would be paraded endlessly on social media and talking-head sports shows. This isn't the good old days anymore. We can't go back to no VAR.

But EPL fans should demand better quality. Especially when many leagues do it really well.

HD broadcasts and the internet. We can literally see everything in a sporting event and with far more clarity than even people on the field now.

jeffk said:

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Dre_00 said:

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Can you imagine the absolute riot that would ensue if a college football team won a game solely because they were given a 5th down to score a TD on the last play of the game?

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Or a team won a World Cup match because of a goal punched in by hand?

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Now I'm glad that legendary goal in that match happened just like it did. Maradona is so great because he scored the 2nd goal also (2-1), and what a beaut. Of course I'm not English.
and it was existentially tied to the Falklands war. One of my favorite wars, because amazingly, we stayed out of it.

IMHO is wasn't Hand of God that really tipped it in favor of VAR. it was Hand of Frog.

And that was really what VAR was aimed to catch. Not the missed foul or OS.

I think VAR in many countries and sports has made things better. MLB for example. I would also say the NFL. And I have not seen the kinds of issues across the rest of Europe that I have seen in England.

But in England I think it has made things worse. I don't really care if it fixes 95% of the mistakes made by refs. That other 5% is so bad and often times inexcusable it becomes such a negative that it overshadows the calls it gets right

Take the Burnley v Luton game this weekend. That call was so obviously missed by the field ref that even the Luton players didn't celebrate the goal. Everyone in the stadium saw it and new it was going to be overruled. I don't fault the on field ref at all. With 22 players on the field sometimes you just cannot see everything. The fact that VAR let it stand overwhelmingly overshadows everything else VAR got right this weekend.

If I was king of the FA I would only use VAR for offsides calls until I figured out how to fix what happened this weekend.

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.

AG@RICE said:

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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. ...

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I actually agree wholeheartedly with this. (mostly

The sexual metaphor of the orgasmic soccer goal long written and spoken of across the globe for generations ...that thing which is unique and can make 1-0 game soccer game meaningful,..the power of delayed gratification and the greatness of release. La petit mort...

...is now somewhat spoiled at least 25% of the time

Idk, I'm going to have to call BS on the "there were errors before VAR and we were all fine with it" claim.

I agree, people complained constantly about officiating. In fact, people still complain constantly about officiating. We fixed nothing.

I want my soccer orgasm back.

Yeah, I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree on not being better off. It's definitely annoying to have celebrations put on hold due to a VAR check, but I am glad that some of the mistakes are being caught using the system.

A) Before VAR, how many times were celebrations cut short because of a delayed whistle (whether merited or not)?

B) Or worse, how many goal scoring opportunities were killed before the shot because of erroneous offside calls?

To me, even if those situations weren't as prevalent as VAR stoppages now, they were far more damaging. I'd much rather have refs choke on their whistles during a buildup to a goal and have to deal with a tense VAR check after than have the play killed with no questions asked afterward.

And honestly, I don't know why you feel like you have to hold back on celebrating in the first place. Have fun - then have your heart ripped out… that's still better than having to "pull out" before the shot even happens because an AR thinks something is offside (right or not).

Finally, most bad calls were completely missed in the days before there were a bajillion HD cameras all over the field. Or at the very least, the situations were typically debatable because replays either weren't available or didn't have a good angle. So yes, people griped at officiating, but it was rare when someone could have definitive proof that they got screwed. Soccer ref griping was like that turd at a little league game who gripes at every pitch call even though he's at a horrible angle and can't see crap.

Now, it's much more common to know beyond a shed of a doubt that you got screwed… which is why these VAR mistakes hurt all the more. And so again, in the days when there are thousands of HD cameras in every stadium (and every other fan wants to broadcast to the world) we would be livid by the amount of uncorrected officiating mistakes that happen in live action.