The death of VAR

Coventry City's disallowed FA Cup semi-final goal should spell the end of VAR as we know it. But Sheffield United fans have known a reckoning was coming since John Lundstram's big toe

Words: David Taylor

After a hugely important game at the bottom of the Premier League ended in Everton’s favour, a tweet from Nottingham Forest’s official account reached levels of embarrassment rarely seen in the modern era, claiming bias and corruption at the highest level of officialdom. You’d assume that the tweet, more suited to an anonymous fan account with a profile picture of Morgan Gibbs-White, will have almost certainly been seen by their latest employee, Gladiators support act Mark Clattenburg. Ironic, given that he’s the same man who said of the Blades when criticising the awarding of a late penalty against West Ham, “If you know football, and you know Sheffield United, and you know McBurnie, then you know he is going to try to disrupt the goalkeeper.” Mark, you will demonstrate double standards on my first whistle.

Nevertheless, looking at the three decisions that went the way of Everton during the match in question, it’s impossible to conclude that the VAR system is anything other than a miserable failure. On a bad day for straight lines everywhere, soon after full time in Liverpool, the final nail in Stockley Park’s coffin was a moment that sapped all the joy out of the world’s oldest football cup competition like a vacuum-packed duvet. From 3-0 down, Coventry City defied the odds to come back to 3-3 against Manchester United in the FA Cup semi-final, and looked more than good value to go on to win in extra time. They – and the millions that still tune into the grandest of domestic cups – thought they’d done just that, only for a brilliantly-worked goal to be ruled out by VAR due to the front few millimetres of Haji Wright’s boot.

“We were 20 seconds from going to an FA Cup final, then 30 seconds later we're in a penalty shootout,” said Coventry manager Mark Robins after the game. “Had he [Wright] cut his toenail, we wouldn't be talking about penalties.”

An attempt to make a sporting event an exact science only serves to drain spontaneity and impulse out of the game. VAR was introduced as a way to right obvious wrongs; to intervene when something has gone terribly awry on the pitch; to add a level of fairness to the blood and thunder. Instead, what’s happened as the system has developed is a dampening of sporting spirit, replaced by men sitting in a darkened room thick with stale air, staring intently at screens beaming a match being played miles away from their business park lair, and drawing lines almost imperceptible from one another that are seemingly not even at the correct perspective.

What would have been one of the FA Cup’s most magical moments for decades – and perhaps could’ve revitalised a competition both jaded by mistaken attempts at modernisation and commercialisation and in a deep mire with the scrapping of FA Cup replays – was consigned to the rubbish heap by an OLED TV and a ruler. For the most part, it’s not the fault of officials: they’re simply trying to enforce the rules. In VAR’s attempts to stop analysts from criticising refereeing decisions from studio chairs, it’s created the beginnings of an AI-powered real-life computer game. Come back, a handful of wrong but understandable decisions each season: all is forgiven.

Sheffield United fans will be able to empathise with Coventry’s pain more than most. We knew about the dangers of toenails long before yesterday, acting as football’s VAR oracle on a rainy night in North London. A quick recap: it’s November 2019, and United are enjoying their first season back in the Premier League by revolutionising what it means to be a centre-back. David McGoldrick finishes one of the best team goals ever scored in the red and white, but the electric boards spring to life with an ominous “checking goal, possible offside”. The now-regular lines are drawn: fantasy football legend John Lundstram was offside in the build-up. Or rather, it looks like potentially the end of his big toe might just be ahead of the last Spurs defender if you squint properly and pretend the footage is clear enough. Goal ruled out. A Chris Wilder GIF is born.

This was almost five years ago, and nothing has changed. Why must ‘progress’ never be looked at, or tweaked, or improved? Money means that technical scrutiny is here to stay – there’s too much of it riding on results. But surely one of football’s biggest draws (and therefore a big money-maker) is the unfettered passion involved? As Daisy Christodoulou says in her thought-provoking thread on Coventry’s non-goal, “Even if it was the right decision, we have made a trade-off to get that accuracy – speed… The Coventry fans and players are going to have [to] get used to what fans of PL teams have had to get used to – that you can't really celebrate a goal the way you did in the past. The in-the-moment spontaneity of a celebration has gone.”

Football’s one of the only fun things we have left in this country at the moment, but unless VAR is rowed back and reevaluated to make it a help instead of a fun-sponge, I expect the game might be at risk of a drawn-out death by a thousand checks. Time for players, managers, owners and officials to stop toeing the line, on and off the pitch.