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Major football rule change should be made after Man City vs Tottenham - NEIL SQUIRES
It is an unfortunate by-product of football’s pursuit of accuracy in decision-making that one of the great matches this week ended up being swallowed up in a VAR cloud.
Manchester City: Guardiola reflects on VAR after Spurs loss
If that sounds like some toxic gas attack then in a sense it was. Manchester City versus Tottenham was a match of dizzying speed and ambition, of incredible drama with impossible twists. The emotional overload was total.
Yet in the end a Champions League semifinal place was decided, not by the relentless energy of Kevin de Bruyne or the finishing of Heung-Min Son but by how match official Cuneyt Cakir responded to two interventions by the Video Assistant Referee.
The second one, in injury time, erased what would have been Raheem Sterling’s hat-trick goal for offside and broke City’s hearts but it was the call 20 minutes earlier to allow Fernando Llorente’s winner on which the match really turned.
The offside decision, tight though it was, was black or white; Llorente’s goal was coated in shades of grey.
Put yourself in the position of the Turkish official as he made the fateful call.
After giving the goal he is alerted by VAR Massimiliano Irrati to a possible handball by Llorente as he diverts a corner in. He walks to the side of the pitch to study a replay of the incident.
In his ear he has players from both teams advising him; in front of him, yards away, are banks of City fans offering their own informed verdict. The stakes are enormous, tumult is extraordinary, the scene vivid and chaotic.
With all this going on around him, the referee has to coolly distil the information presented to him by the different camera angles and come to a decision. It is the pivot point moment in the quarterfinal and he is operating in a zoo.
After several looks, he makes his call but on the wrong information. The angle he repeatedly studies is not the one that gives away the telltale ripple on Llorente’s forearm.
He gives the goal and explains the decision by pointing to his hip, clearly informing the players that was where the ball struck the Spurs striker. He appears to miss the handball.
As it happens he arrives, via the wrong path, at the right decision.
If he had seen the contact with the arm - contact Llorente admitted afterwards - the goal should have stood anyway according to the letter of the law as it stands. So justice, however cruel on City, was served but more by luck than judgment.
Is this an argument for VAR to be discarded? On the contrary it should be upgraded.
Football would be better off promoting the Video Assistant Referee and giving him the ultimate say in a scenario like this.
How much better it would have been for that decision to have been made somewhere less pressurised and mind-scrambling by someone qualified to do the job.
How much quicker too. The VAR could have analysed and adjudicated in half the time it took him to call the incident to the referee’s attention and for Cakir to scrutinise it himself.
On-field referee and video official are different specialisms and require a different skillset. The former deals with a quickly-changing picture where decisions have to be made instantly; the latter needs to be far more forensic. One is a bobby on the beat, the other is a crime scene investigator.
VAR: How the Video Assistant Referee works
In rugby union, the two work together to come to a conclusion. The on-field referee will check a try or foul play with the Television Match Official and be guided towards a decision with the incident replayed on the big screen. Ultimate responsibility though remains with the man with the whistle.
In cricket, the evolution of technology’s power has gone further. The third umpire has the authority to overrule the on-field umpires and the big reveal, on the giant screen, is now an accepted part of the drama.
Concerns that this would undermine the authority of the on-field umpires have largely gone. In fact the system has shown how good on-field umpires are.
Football, now it has by and large accepted VAR, needs to move the same way.