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With the score at 2-1 in the World Cup quarter final, England midfielder Frank Lampard stuck a volley from the edge of the box, flying over Germany goalkeeper Manuel Neuer, before crashing against the bar and bouncing down towards the goal line. It bounced back up and hit the bar again before Neuer could collect the ball and play it clear. Had the ball gone in, the game would have been level with the momentum all being with the three lions. No goal was given; Germany went on to win the game 4-1 and sent England crashing out.
However, replays showed that the ball had clearly crossed the line. Lampard had in fact scored a wonder goal against the Germans and England should have drawn level. The referee’s judgement had sent England back home with nothing to show for their efforts; it was now 44 years since an almost identical strike against West Germany had been given, seeing England on their way to their one and only World Cup victory.
This was just the most high profile goal line error made by referees and linesmen in a string of controversies that saw the world of football implement goal line technology – a Hawkeye system similar to that used at Wimbledon tennis and in cricket – just two years on from Lampard’s ‘ghost goal’.
The technology was seamlessly implanted in all of football’s biggest competitions and leagues, and is now the standard practice, with only one high profile error in failing to give a goal scored by Sheffield United against Aston Villa in the Premier League – Villa keeper Orjan Nyland was blocking the goal line sensors and the referee failed to spot the ball had crossed the line.
However, despite its major success, the existence of ghost goals and the failure to give many high profile goals – in some instances the difference between winning trophies or relegation, worth potentially millions of pounds to clubs – the technology could not eliminate all human error behind refereeing decisions.
This was the purpose behind VAR, or Video Assistant Referees. Boardrooms fearful to the financial impact of human error and chance decisions – the recent Super League fiasco showing just how much boardrooms are averse to the risks of human factors in competitive sport – pushed to implement video support for referees to check over decisions and make sure the correct outcome was awarded. Events like Thierry Henry’s handball in a qualifying match for the same World Cup Lampard saw his goal not-given knocking stopping the Republic of Ireland from securing an historic upset were just too big to leave to human error.
Despite initial scepticism from some in football governing bodies, with former FIFA President Sepp Blatter being a vocal opponent, fans and clubs were united in their support of implementing a VAR system in football, similar to that used in Rugby. When Gianni Infantino rose to replace the ousted Blatter at FIFA, part of his promise was for the mainstream introduction of VAR and it was partly this that secured him much support amongst the biggest clubs in Europe.
When it was implemented, despite many teething problems that saw some decisions take 10 minutes to decide without any communication to the fans, it was resoundingly popular. Some minor tweaks in its first months of use following its successful trial at the 2018 World Cup saw it implemented in the domestic leagues and taking decisions from a 95% accuracy rating to a 99.3% – almost no decisions in football were left to human error.
Or so we thought, but what has become increasingly clear, is that although VAR eliminates errors in refereeing calls, it has spotlighted the subjectivity in refereeing decisions. Where one player may be given a red card for a clumsy challenge, a different referee may choose deem a yellow card more appropriate.
VAR is supposed to be for ‘clear and obvious’ errors only, meaning that judgement calls are left to the referee and only incidents like Thierry Henry’s handball would be looked at by the Video Assistant Referee – who is seated in a remote location in a room clad with so many screens it resembles an FBI surveillance control room – would be subject to review.
Yet in practice, this is not the case, and fans are often left standing around multiple times a game, twiddling their thumbs and waiting for the on-pitch referee to run to the monitor and have a look at the decision the VAR told them they may have gotten wrong.
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More than this however, is the subjectivity of particular decisions and a lack of constituency in how the laws of football are applied. Fulham midfielder Mario Lemina had a goal ruled out for an accidental handball when the ball ricocheted off his arm before the Gabon international fired it beyond Tottenham goalkeeper Hugo Lloris. This was despite an almost identical contact being made by Chelsea’s Callum Hudson-Odoi just a week prior in which the referee decided there was no handball. VAR has underlined that there is not necessarily one correct decision for the same action and that referee’s differing opinions, is the real red herring in football decisions.
To make matters worse for Fulham in that game, The FA – who are the governing body of football in England – changed the handball law so that Lemina’s goal probably would have stood; probably, because you can never be truly sure what a referee might decide. The fact that the rule was changed mid-season perhaps best epitomises everything that has gone wrong with VAR and why it has failed to be implanted as successfully as goal line technology.
Where in deciding if a ball has crossed the line, it is hard to be subjective, in deciding whether or not there was intent in a handball, or whether a player’s armpit constitutes part of their arm and renders them offside, is something that is subjective. Despite the calls of the boardroom to put greater certainty into the outcomes of football matches, or for fans longing that their club will not once again be on the wrong end of a bad decision, it seems that football will never be able to eliminate the fundamental subjectivity that underlines humans.
Whilst many high-profile errors have now been removed and decisions are more accurate, fans often feel just as cheated by refereeing decisions as before VAR came into force; in many cases even more so, when the referee looked at the incident 7 times and still decided against their team.
Tweaks to VAR, provided they are not mid-season, have made an improvement and will make further improvements, but to be successful it would need to ensure decision making is as objective as possible. This cannot happen where referees must account for things like ‘intent’ or whether what constitutes a player’s arm differs from one game to the next – decisions need to be applied strictly, meaning if an event happens it automatically engages that rule. It is much easier to eliminate human judgement if the ball hitting a player’s arm was the offence in-and-of-itself and there was no room for a referee to judge intent, the subjectivity could be taken out of decisions.
Although the above rule would probably be overly harsh, it is an example of the only way the rules can be implemented if VAR is to be a success in the long run. Whilst most people now bemoan VAR’s very existence for killing the excitement of football or for even making refereeing decisions worse, its biggest crime is that it does not eliminate human judgement. If VAR is to be successful, the rules of football need to change.
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Calum Paton is a History and Politics graduate from the University of Warwick and he is currently studying a MA at the University of Law. His writing predominantly focuses on American and British politics. Twitter: @Paton_Calum
