How baseball could lead to a better version of VAR: David Richards

By the time we noticed the assistant’s flag, the celebrating had been done. Hunt was offside. VAR upheld the decision. We sat down and tried to recover what remained of our dignity.

Wednesday won anyway. Josh Windass scored with the match’s final action, in the 123rd minute, so Vaulks can laugh about the greatest celebration of a goal he never scored. My daughter has also forgiven me.

VAR did not make the original decision that afternoon; the assistant did. But it has made that sensation, the goal that exists only provisionally, a routine part of watching football. You celebrate, embrace whoever is within reach and then look towards the referee to discover whether you were entitled to any of it.

VAR corrects mistakes. Of course it does. The question is what football has surrendered in return.

This past season the Premier League began announcing many VAR decisions over stadium public-address systems and showing decisive footage on big screens. That improves on “Check in Progress”, but being told the result is not the same as hearing the reasoning. Rugby lets spectators follow the officials’ conversation. Football still delivers a ruling from somewhere beyond the stadium.

Offside technology is becoming faster, but handballs and penalties remain matters of judgement. The controversy survives; it simply arrives after a longer wait. Baseball’s experience offers another way.

When baseball tested fully automated balls and strikes in its minor leagues, the plate umpire became a messenger for a computer. The journalist Pablo Torre, who had long supported robot umpires, recently told Ira Glass that watching it changed his mind. Shouting at the umpire felt like “yelling at your computer monitor”. The calls were consistent. The experience was oddly dead.

Major League Baseball chose a different system for 2026. The human umpire still calls every pitch. A batter, pitcher or catcher who disagrees taps a helmet or cap. Each team begins with two challenges and retains successful ones. About fifteen seconds later, Hawk-Eye displays its verdict for everyone to see.

In Cincinnati in March, plate umpire CB Bucknor had six calls overturned. The crowd erupted when two called third strikes were reversed on consecutive pitches. Technology had created drama rather than draining it away.

Football is already closer to this idea than many supporters realise. FIFA has been trialling Football Video Support, which gives coaches two review cards and leaves the final decision with the referee on the pitch. No remote official examines every incident. Championship clubs were offered it for next season and rejected it.

I understand why. Presented as cut-price VAR, it sounds like more of something supporters already dislike. Baseball suggests it is a different principle altogether.

Keep goal-line technology because it is immediate. For everything else, give each manager two appeals and retain them when successful. Technology can settle factual matters. For penalties and red cards, the referee should watch the footage, decide and explain it to the stadium. The crowd should see the same pictures. No appeal, no review. It would not produce perfect justice; neither does VAR. Referees would still make mistakes and managers would squander challenges. By Friday morning the phone-ins would be arguing about both.

Good. Football needs decisions made quickly, in public, by a recognisably human being. And, every now and again, it needs someone to boo.

David Richards is a philanthropist and technology entrepreneur