Why VAR is football’s Brexit and merely reinforces infantile behaviour after fresh controversy

Roberto Firmino’s armpit was flagged as offside in Liverpool’s win over Aston Villa to spark wild debate

VAR is football’s Brexit. The majority of people wanted it but failed to understand how it might affect the game or how it would be implemented. Then came the realisation that it is unworkable. And no one knows where to go from here.

Technology was never going to solve the game’s problems. It just shifted the nature of controversy over refereeing decisions.

There is a solution to football’s officiating issues but few within the sport want to admit it. The answer is for managers, players and supporters to grow up. That will never happen. Referees and their assistants are far from perfect and are easy targets.

After another bout of VAR comedy during Liverpool’s 2-1 victory over Aston Villa, Jurgen Klopp repeated the tired old trope that bad decisions cost managers their jobs. It’s nonsense. There are a multitude of reasons bosses get sacked but the next time a referee’s error leads directly to a manager’s P45 will be the first. Klopp was just repeating a cliché – it’s football’s equivalent of ‘those foreigners are coming over here and taking all our jobs’ – and, to be blunt, it’s absolute bollocks.

The introduction of VAR has thrown up real questions. Again, the parallels with Brexit are clear. In the haste to leave the European Union, hardly anyone considered the effect on the Irish border and whether it would lead to the breakup of the United Kingdom. VAR has exposed the flaws in the offside law in particular. Klopp – and the rest of his profession – should be querying the rules in this area.

Roberto Firmino’s goal was disallowed because the assistant referee flagged him offside. The VAR review did not overrule the official. That made sense. The decision could have gone either way.

Of course, the Premier League’s explanation was risible and made things worse. They released a graphic showing that Firmino’s armpit was beyond the last defender. It was the most stupid jobsworth-style justification possible. Is this what offside is for?

The rule was introduced to counter goal-hanging – gaining an advantage by lurking deep in the opposition’s half. It was never meant to evolve into a system where lines of players are freeze-framed to check whether an attacker’s run was premature by the odd millimetre. We have completely lost any sense of what offside was supposed to be about.

But at least offside presents a more or less objective scenario for VAR to deal with. The technology may not be available to determine the precise moment a pass takes place and its relationship to the position of the player who is the intended recipient of the ball, but when science catches up with the desperation to ensure every offside decision is absolutely correct, the rulings will be indisputable. VAR can never work where decisions are subjective.

Another of those platitudes that are spouted with moronic regularity is “we just want consistency.”

Can we all be honest here? The only consistency that fans, players and managers want is for decisions to go consistently their way. It’s a feeling of entitlement that, curiously, is twinned with paranoia. Every club thinks that everyone else is against them and they are the only bastions of decency.

Roberto Firmino was given offside by VAR (Premier League)

Diving is the classic example. Pep Guardiola, apropos of nothing, rather petulantly suggested that Sadio Mane is a diver after Manchester City’s 2-1 win over Southampton. There must be a Catalan idiom that involves glass houses and stones but City’s fanbase agreed eagerly while their Liverpool counterparts scrambled to post on social media examples of Guardiola’s team going down easily when challenged by opponents. Most instances of ‘simulation’ – an awful piece of jargon – become even more difficult to assess when replayed in super-slow motion and determining whether punishment is required is completely subjective. If the decision goes against you, it’s a conspiracy.

If VAR could rid the game of hypocrisy it would be the greatest innovation in football history but every indication so far is that it is reinforcing infantile behaviour. And still the mistakes come.

Television has not been good for referees. The unerring, frequently undiscriminating eye of the camera exposes all their flaws and rarely highlights their positive impact on matches. It is hard to officiate top-class football matches. The pace of the game is breathtaking and it is easy to miss incidents as the ball and players zoom around the pitch. Getting things right in an instant is tough. It is more simple afterwards. Everyone can pore over replays of blunders and people who have never put a whistle to their lips proffer opinions with glib self-confidence.

Jurgen Klopp claims VAR could cost some managers their jobs (Getty) (Getty Images)

The mess we are seeing now is a natural consequence of the managers of the televisual age trashing the reputation of referees and blaming them for the ills of the sport. As the Brexit zealots seek to undermine belief in the institutions of the state – Parliament, the civil service and the courts – some of the most famous names in British football chipped away at the reputations of those in authority on the pitch.

Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger were vocal in their rage against referees and Jose Mourinho took things to a different level when he helped force Anders Frisk into retirement 14 years ago. No wonder the public have lost faith in officials. Another fake news staple is that the active crop of referees are the worst in history. This is commonly accepted despite officials having better training programmes than ever and being significantly fitter than their predecessors. The fond recollections of men in black from the past are seen through the soft focus of memory and not the harsh glare of television cameras.

VAR is a desperate and misguided attempt to restore belief in refereeing. It has backfired and merely added to the mistrust. Brexit will probably be resolved long before VAR is executed to everyone’s satisfaction.