Passion is the spirit of the game, for those who play and for those who follow it. Those aren't ancillary things, that's the heart of the matter. Pedantry and obsession over the rule of law kills it.
Also giving calls 5 minutes after it's already happened. Breaking: the 1986 World Cup has been given to England thanks to VAR ruling out Maradona's handball goal.
The wait for the darn thing is annoying AF. There is place for VAR, but Conmebol has long way to go. So does the WWC. At least for the last WC it wasn't as intrusive and it actually sorta worked.
I have enjoyed the flow of this AFCON match much more without the VAR. No drama, no missed calls. We will see how it changes after the quarter finals. Watching this compared to the mess that the copa has been makes me appreciate what soccer used to be.
And how is that possible ? their match, wasn't even the final match of the tournament. However, same match saw many red card fouls not called made preciselly on Maradona, during the whole match, lots earlier than Maradona's hand goal. With VAR in place back then, England would have lost the match by finishing with less than 6 players on the pitch.
For everyone like you there are 1 or 5 that got up in arms when calls where missed. How could ref miss that ? Incompetent ! Corruption ! And etc ... Handball for example has been a rule that has gone through so many different interpretations everybody was already frustrated with it before VAR. I agree WC seemed to be the perfect balance. I don't want them to expand it more. Could be because some of these in game situations just didn't come up during the WC.
I swear that this Copa America takes the longest I've ever seen in handling VAR. Never seen it take so long so frequency!
Is it just me or way too many players are leading with their elbow on aerial battles nowadays ? There is at least 1 or 2 incidents every game it seems.
6 wasted minutes to hand out a yellow card. Absolutely ridiculous. Can they just save it for major calls. Jeez.
They are important but not more important than officials trying to get things right. As I said before there are growing pains because it is the very first time being used. Nothing to cry about.
All of these Examples of Group A are a bit different because the good majority of them are either calls that the main official did not choose to use VAR for (They never have that obligation) or they are too close to call. So there may be an appearance of bias for a big team but it is not. It was more of decisions made by a ref that thought they had a better view. Dramatic music aside. People seem to like to have it both ways here. They complain about how VAR takes away from the flow and the spirit of the game and then criticize a ref for allowing the flow and the spirit of the game to continue because the Ref feels they don't need the use of VAR in their official opinion. Either we have all the stoppages or we just let the players play.
Back to this tournament. It will be interesting to see how things go today. Bolivia still has a very slim chance of qualifying so they will not just lay down and die for Venezuela. Brasil is in a bit of a relative crisis but they are still better than Peru. Should be exciting.
I said this in the Colombian forum but I still think Argentina qualifies somehow. They will probably get some miraculous goal from Messi and barely get through.
I think Argentina is the worst match for Qatar. I see Qatar having their worst match against Argentina. But they've done well so far. Should have beaten Paraguay.