The recent controversy concerning the performance of the Video Assistant Referee (VAR), in the Premier League match between Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool, is the latest in a catalogue of incidents involving the increasing dominance of the technology in the professional game. Most tellingly, although the eventual decision made by the VAR favoured his own team, the 'Spurs manager, Ange Postecoglou, was scathing in his condemnation of its use. His concerns appear to be shared by other managers; with England boss, Gareth Southgate, reputedly having said that the game was better pre-VAR.
As a one-time engineer, I appreciate the value of technology. But only when it is applied in an appropriate context. The fact that a particular technology exists doesn’t mean that it automatically adds value - less still that it leads to ‘correct’ decision-making in the context of association football. The game is a complex, fast-moving process. VAR is not simply flawed in its practice but in its basic concept. Things that happen in football are not reducible to pseudo-scientific decision-making. Apparently, many onfield decisions are so clearly and obviously mistaken that it often takes several minutes for those operating the technology to reach their decisions. As part of this, they use slow-motion replays and views from multiple angles that bear no relationship to the complex social reality of the in-the-moment interactions that took place on the pitch.
The only thing that is clear and obvious to me is that it is not simply the way in which the technology is being applied that is flawed. Its very use is fundamentally ill-conceived.
Drawing a line under VAR
There is only one aspect of a football match that can be answered definitively. That is, “Did the ball cross the line between the goalposts?”. All other happenings in the game are a matter of opinion. And the only opinion that should matter is that of the referee; supported by their on-field assistants.
The referee’s in-the-moment decision-making - questionable or otherwise that it might be in a specific instant - is as much part of the emerging action as the brilliantly or poorly executed skills of everyone else on the pitch. If the referee rules a goal onside, it is onside. Even if everyone else in the stadium (or, at least, the opposing manager and supporters) have a different opinion.
The only line that should be drawn in relation to offside is the metaphorical one under the referee’s decision. If anything underlines the farcical nature of VAR it has to be the imaginary line that appears on the screen during reviews of offside decisions. Because it is impossible to model the complex interplay of what is actually happening in the moment of the referee’s decision-making, the meaning of the offside law is dispensed with and the rule reconstructed to suit the limitations of the technology.
So we end up with an imaginary line being drawn across the screen to detect solely whether a part of the goalscorer’s anatomy (or kit) happens to be fractionally closer to the goal than that of the second-last defender. Sorted! Except, of course, that this has nothing to do with offside per se. The sole purpose of the rule is (or was!) to prevent the attacking team from gaining an unfair advantage. Now we have decisions being made that are entirely devoid of any sense of this. Even if the attacker had their back to the goal when the ball was passed to them and, in all common understanding, was in line with the last defender, they can be ruled offside simply because some ‘techie’ can demonstrate that the heel of their boot was ‘in an offside position’. How can we possibly have managed without such sophisticated decision-making for so many years?
Getting out of 'arms way
Similarly with handball in the penalty area. No doubt to the annoyance of the powers that be, footballers have arms. Given the speed and unpredictability of the motion of the ball, it is inevitable that it will come into contact with a defender’s arm or hand from time to time. The important question is (or used to be), “Was this the result of deliberate action by the defender, to prevent a goal, or simply an accidental outcome of the natural dynamics of the fast-moving game?” Once again this is a matter of judgement and, once again, that judgement can only sensibly be made by the on-field officials, who are similarly immersed in the in-the-moment action.
Yet again, though, VAR can’t model the complexity of what happened, so the rules of the game are changed to accommodate its limitations. If the ball hits the hand and this is judged(!) to be in an “unnatural position” (whatever that means) it’s a penalty. In response, attackers should perhaps learn to ‘play the percentages’, as they say. That is, if no better option presents itself, they should hit the ball as hard as possible into any available mass of defenders and bet on it hitting the arm of at least one of them.
One inevitable consequence of all of this will be descent into the pit of technology-first decision-making, as the on-field officials lose confidence in their own ability to rule on the emerging action. One example of this, that has already been 'baked in' to matches with VAR, is the requirement for the onfield assistants to delay raising their flag when they judge a player to be offside until the attack dies out or the ball enters the net. This is supposedly in case they make a 'mistake'.- which the VAR technology can't be used to rule upon, until the move is complete and the game has been stopped.
It's not Cricket
To support the use of VAR, reference is often made to the technology-assisted reviews in other sports; in particular, cricket. There is, though, a significant difference between the way that technology is used in other sporting contexts and its application in football. In all cases (other than off-the-ball offences in rugby) the technology is used to track the motion of the ball and the positioning of a player’s foot (or bat) in relation to fixed lines on the pitch. The only parallel in football (unless they decide to review the ball crossing the touch line or goal line for throw-ins and corners) is the question of whether or not the whole of the ball has crossed the goal line between the posts. Even with corners and throw-ins, the most significant question is still a matter of judgement, as to who touched the ball last. So the situations are not comparable.
The contentious (and frequently inconclusive) discussions that used to take place week-in-week-out in tv studios between supposed experts pre-VAR should have been warning enough of the chaos that would ensue if the technophiles got their way. But clearly not. This hasn’t stopped, of course. It’s just that now the arguments focus on the simplistic, right/wrong judgements based on the limitations of the technology, rather than on the onfield incidents themselves.
And the decision is...
Sadly, it’s unlikely that the decision to use VAR will be reversed, even if it ends up sucking the life out of the game. Perhaps we should look forward to a time when human beings - with all of their inconvenient idiosyncrasies and complex, in-the-moment actions and interactions - aren’t involved in the game at all. With computer simulation being the order of the day.
As a final thought, the logical position for the advocates of VAR to take would surely be for them to argue that all statistics relating to games played during the era of ‘fatally flawed’ pre-VAR decision-making should be erased from the record books.
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Postscript - Lessons for organizational management
The farce surrounding VAR should give cause for concern about the rapidly increasing introduction of technology into the organizational sphere. This is again based on the seemingly unquestioned assumption that certainty can be achieved through the increasingly intensive application of advanced technologies, process modelling and in-depth data analysis. In reality, however sophisticated the approach appears to be, it can never account for the complex social dynamics through which organization is enacted and outcomes emerge in practice. Worse still, as has happened with VAR, the impossibility of modelling the complex reality of organization is likely to result in the simplistic distortion of what's actually going on, and how this is evaluated, to suit the limitations of the technology.
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