VAR is here to stay, so here’s six ways to improve it - Stuart Rayner

VAR takes something away from the game and the art of refereeing. We have to remember the strange masochists who blow a whistle or wave a flag at games are doing it to show off their own skills too. At times it feels like football cannot live with them, but it cannot live without them.

VAR was introduced to cut out howlers, but only seems to bring different ones. At times it feels like an academic experiment in finding micro-details in the laws to scrub off a goal or back up referees. A few more decisions are technically correct, but more leave you shaking your head thinking, “This is not football”.

The idea technology can eradicate mistakes caused by human error does not stand up to scrutiny when that technology is used and interpreted by VARs with the same flaws.

And all the while, elite football moves further away not just from what happens on parks every weekend, but even the Football League, which does not have VAR.

A highly-debatable VAR decision saw Leeds United knocked out of the FA Cup a fortnight ago – they deserved to lose on the balance of play, but still it was uncomfortable. Seven days later at the same ground, the same teams both had goals chalked off for offside.

When Marcelo Bielsa is sarcastically applauding VAR as he did when Mateusz Klich was denied a goal against West Ham United, something is wrong.

But it is not going away, so the challenge is to make it better. After all, it felt much more effective at the last European Championships, only for the same gripes and frustrations to return with the Premier League.

So here are my suggestions.

1) Talk to the fans

In the NFL, in both codes of rugby and in cricket, television referees communicate their decisions and their thinking to the people who matter the most – the paying customers in the stadium. Making the VAR speak directly to the supporters – in the stadium and on TV – to explain why they are doing what they are doing would help the situation so much, as would showing incidents on big screens. Some Premier League clubs do not have them – they need to get them. It is not right that TV viewers can see these incidents whilst those in the stadium do not know what is happening.

2) Say sorry

This does not just apply to VAR decisions. Referees and VARs are humans who make mistakes. When you do, just admit it and say sorry, do not send the PGMOL scurrying through the rulebook to find some loophole to desperately try to justify the inexcusable.

3) Put them on the clock

The whole point of VAR was to eliminate howlers, not nitpick to the nth degree, so put a reasonable time limit on how long he or she has to reach a decision. If they cannot decide in, say, two minutes there has been a clear and obvious error it cannot either be clear or obvious, so stick with the referee.

4) “Umpire’s call” for offsides

In cricket, when lbw decisions are tighter than the technology’s margin for error, the decision review system (their answer to VAR) sides with the umpire. For offside decisions, the linesmen and women should be told to flag and when thick lines are drawn on the screen, if they overlap, go with whatever the official decided. There are not enough frames per minute for the technology to be as accurate as its advocates like to pretend it is.

5) Deal with divers

If there is one thing VAR should be perfect for, it is dealing with the scourge of diving, but it largely turns a blind eye. Diving is hard to judge with the naked eye and given what it means to accuse someone of cheating, even if on-field referees refuse to give free-kicks or penalties for it, they rarely reach for the yellow card. As VAR is not supposed to rule on yellow cards, they are not allowed to advise referees to punish these cheats. The game would be a lot better if they did.

6) Involve ex-referees

One problem of VAR is when you have a video assistant referee in Stockley Park for every Premier League game plus an “assistant video assistant referee” (fans of The Office will realise it is starting to sound like Gareth Keenan’s job title), it massively dilutes the pool of referees each Saturday, lowering standards down the pyramid.

There are plenty of ex-referees no longer fit enough to chase young full-time professional athletes around for 90 minutes who know the rules and the game. Use them.

It would also water down unfair accusations of mates helping mates by backing their decisions from Stockley Park.

Not that it should come into the thinking, but it would bring a few into the tent who enjoy passing judgement on current referees through the media.