you really could not make this shit up .... this is a summary of VAR at the WWC: https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/48735650 which includes this: On Friday, a rule that stated goalkeepers at the World Cup must be cautioned for encroachment at penalties was suspended for shootouts. It came after three players were shown yellow cards for breaking the rule during normal time. un-effing-believable...
If you were giving cautions for encroachment in shootouts, you'd have teams with no available goalkeepers for their next match.
Cameroon players come close to walking off the pitch as VAR rules a goal offside - another "yes, using my microscope I can see her shadow was ahead of the defenders".
Not this match but one argument was give the benifit to the attacking team. Not when they have a bank of TV screens and magnifying glasses. Then call offside by fractions.
Perhaps but I'm thinking just a different ref and that game wouldn't have seen extra time or pens. Even with VAR many of these call are still down to human subjectivity.
for the love of God change the rule to "if the attacker is ahead of the defender by a material distance, it's offside. otherwise, the play is allowed to proceed". I suspect most people could live with that, even though "material" is subjective. but negating otherwise good goals coz the attackers was ahead by what is obviously a completely irrelevant distance ....
For those who are led to believe that VAR means something robotic or super computer AI algorithms. This is what it is. Yesterday a brains trust like this reviewed a play for 3 minutes and said to the ref, in effect "Shit! We don't know, you call it." You you could clearly see the ref was confounded she watched the same screenshot over and over. Turned to come back to the game, then went back to the TV again. Then it looked like she thought "I give up I'd better get this game going again."
The call was the keeper had possession. HA!!!' Those 3 people in the photo called that, with the help of the ref. Even the Fox half time idiots were stunned.
I think I've changed my opinion to "I like VAR in theory" but in practice, it's executed so poorly. If they want to keep this up, they have to switch it to just obvious things that they can review in a minute or less. The VARs where the people in the VAR room tell the ref that the goal was clearly offside/onside are what I like the best. No long stops to stare at it for hours. Just straight up, "hey, sorry, you got it wrong" and an "ok thanks" from the ref. Simple.
There! It just happened in the Brazil-France game. Brazil was incorrectly ruled offside. The VAR phoned it in that the officials (on field) were wrong. They blow a goal. Simple.
It didn't need VAR at all. Any competent AR would have called that, Instantly!. It did not need 3 people in a room with a bank of TVs to handle that. Why compliment it?
it is supposed to be "clear and obvious errors". or, to be more accurate, that's how it started. see my post above - calling someone offside when the "advantage" cannot be seen with the naked / unaided eye, is crazy imo. as it stands, if my (attacking) elbow is closer to the goal than your (defending) backside, I'm offside - whereas in reality my body position gives me NO advantage whatsoever. VAR is making a joke of the game with those decisions, imo.
The horrible side effect of VAR is that it's made ARs (and centers to an extent) totally soft and useless. They can't call shit because they know the TV can't review it if they do. So they just guess after the fact and the TV sorts out whether they are right or not. Horror show.
There's another perfectly clear Offside. It didn't matter the 3 players were in offside positions, it did when one touched it though. No need again to wake the VAR crew.