I don't agree with the blanket statement I hear a lot about slow motion having no place in VAR. It is absolutely needed in bang-bang situations where they're looking for handling or contact. That, to me, is still clear and obvious if running it slowly creates no doubt. Where I think it needs to be used less often is when it isolates a foul and makes it look like something is worse than it actually is. A player gets tripped and they use slow motion to show that the opponent didn't do every thing he could to not accidentally step on the down player. There are many PKs where slow motion distorts the real time action. Here there needs to be better use of slow motion and making sure they still go back to real time to see the bigger picture. I feel that MLS often falls into this trap.
I'd agree with that. But after Dean's comments about not wanting to send his mate to the screen I'd say that it was a good call to have the CR review this.
I'm sorry, but what world do you live in? The instant a major decision is missed with these new rules you're suggesting there will be an unending chorus of "we need to change VAR to fix this". Anyone thinking otherwise hasn't paid attention to the last 40(?) years of sports. The NFL did exactly what you're suggesting. They had replay, and then they reviewed it largely because of these type of complaints. That lasted until a missed call cost a team a playoff spot (specifically, a referee seeing the white Jets helmet over the goal line and somehow mistaking it for the ball, giving the Jets a last second touchdown to beat the Seahawks, who missed the playoffs by one game). Then replay came storming back and has never left.
I think you have to separate the experience of the fans/supporters of the team on the wrong end of the decision from all the neutral fans. Fans of the team being "wronged" might put up a fuss, but again....if it takes 3-4 minutes to reach a decision, then it's not a "clear and obvious error" in the first place, and shouldn't be overturned. But everyone else will be much happier with shorter reviews that don't disrupt the game as much.
Obviously, I'm not impartial, but I still say Jesus's movement was more in line with someone who thought he was about to be kicked in the ribs than someone trying to deliberately control the ball with his arm.
Having not even seen the incident yet, just reading his post, two things stick out... "No it has to be a deliberate act..." Uh, no, it doesn't. Deliberate or unnaturally bigger. If your primary goal (after generating clicks) is to educate, how do you get that wrong? "We should be seeing referees stick with their own decision more often..." Again, no, we shouldn't. Now, you can justifiably criticize EPL referees for individual cases of not rejecting OFRs. That's a fair point. But the actual goal is for the VARs and CRs to be on the exact same instructional page, singing from the exact same song sheet. We only should be seeing "more rejected OFRs" IF you concede that VARs are making clear mistakes, which would be (or is) a problem in its own right. But rejected OFRs shouldn't be a feature of VAR. It should be the very rare and occasional occurrence (remember how many there were in Qatar?). The fact that MLS has a higher frequency of rejected OFRs is due primarily to the lower threshold for intervention and more liberal interpretation of clear and obvious--but it's also simply due to VARs screwing up. When there's a correctly rejected OFR, the VAR has likely failed his match. So to flatly say that we should see more rejected OFRs in England either completely misses the point of how VAR is supposed to work OR it is implicitly (and silently) conceding that VARs are regularly screwing up with bad affirmative interventions. Given the very low rate of intervention in the EPL and Johnson's own arguments about missed interventions, I find it hard to believe he's arguing the latter. So he's either just contradicting his own argument or he doesn't know what he's saying.
In terms of the incident itself, here's what I found. Can't find a better clip at the moment. Apologies for the text, but can't just paste in a video from X without the content... I mean here we are. The next day after that whopper of a decision to fail to award a clear handball by Gabriel Jesus and Kai Havertz goes on to score. Michael Oliver is one of the worst referees in existence! Stuart Atwell not far behind. pic.twitter.com/EnMIXyqefb https://t.co/rplr3Wme0o— J (@jcotteri) May 20, 2024
Having now seen it, and in the interest of being fair to Johnson, I guess he only wrote "deliberate" because "unnaturally bigger" is impossible there in that particular circumstance. Still, if the underlying goal is educating, he should enumerate both options. The audio for that could be fascinating, so I wonder if Webb does a last show and goes over this. I imagine--if things went as well as they possibly could--it all came down to a simple difference in assessment on "deliberate." And I can understand why that splits opinions. On the one hand, no pun intended, he is deliberately trying to play and intercept the ball and he ultimately does so by making contact with the arm. On the other, the arm is about as tucked as it possibly can be and he's made his silhouette as narrow as possible, so the fact that ball hits his arm is just sort of dumb luck when he's made every possible physical effort to not deliberately handle. I think I could go either way on this and I suppose that if I were standing at a monitor after not calling it initially, that would lead me to the same conclusion as Oliver.
We've strayed a bit from noting and analyzing assignments, but Brooks has the Championship playoff final, for what that's worth. Starting to appear like he's the referee who will pushed next inside UEFA and on the international stage.
My point was that if an error is "clear and obvious", it shouldn't take a whole lot of time for the VAR to see it and make a recommendation to the CR. If it takes 3-4 minutes of examining replays via super slo-mo, then the error is neither "clear", nor "obvious" , by virtue of being so difficult to discern/adjudicate that it's taking way too long to resolve/analyze/decide. It may arguably still be an error, but it's not "clear and obvious". .
Sure, maybe I could agree. So they could rename the principle... but that's purely a conversation about branding. It's not about "this incident should be so obvious!" -- clear and obvious necessarily applies to incidents which are very, very complex and take a long time to sort out, because it's not about how "obvious" a call should be to make... it's about VAR intervention, and whether the ref "clearly and obviously" missed something based on his stated take on an incident. And by the current laws/protocols, that's by design. As far as I understand.
The problem is how/where you draw the line between correcting mistakes and re-refereeing. That's why I think the best solution, and the one that will generally make supporters the least upset, is to take the decision whether or not to review a play out of the hands of the officials and put it on the shoulders of managers, by implementing a challenge system. Players and managers will no longer be able to complain about questionable calls and/or whether or not they were reviewed, because that decision will be in the hands of the manager. If they think a call is questionable, they can challenge it...if they choose not to challenge it, then that's on them, NOT on the officials.
I mean, some of that I agree with... but I'm just talking about is what "clear and obvious" currently means. It's as much about what the ref says to VAR as it is what actually occurs in the incident.
Yes, NFL fans and coaches never complain about questionable calls and they never blame the officials for them. Wait, hold on, getting an update over my headphones. Turns out that only happens in some other dimension of existence and is nowhere near accurate for this world.
Moreoever, the NFL has pretty black and white rules. Or, at least, its reveiwable plays are based on black and white rules (now that the pass interference review is gone). There might be things a coaching staff doesn't see fully at first glance or they might just be taking a gamble because they need to, but largely speaking coaching staffs and referees in the NFL are looking at the same facts and you usually know ahead of time which way a review is going to go unless it's just very very close (like respotting a ball for a first down or a fumble v incomplete decision). That is not how our sport works. I mean, look at the nature of the things we're reviewing. Was it a foul? Was it a red card? Was it a handball? Is a referee going to be more likely to agree with a partisan coach who has an incentive to believe his own interpretation or a neutral colleague who says "yeah, pal, you botched this one, come take a look." Also, how long would a given team have to decide they were challening a decision? Right now, the VARs have the referee hold a restart while they perform a formal check, if neceessary. Would coaches get to delay the quick restarts of their opponent for little-to-no reason as a tactical manuever (the answer is yes)? How many times would they get to do that? Because you don't just have to limit the number of challenges, you also have to limit the number of times that they can even consider a challenge. Unless we expect coaches to initiative a precious challenge without having the full set of facts, which would be a pretty big step back from the current system. The arguments for the challenge route in our sport have always baffled me. There are so many holes to punch in it. It just feels like something that people argue for either because it's different or because of the NFL/NHL and neither argument really works.
But how does a challenge system affect the re-refereeing/correcting mistakes border? By which I mean that challenging a play is still wanting the referee to re-referee the decision. Also the NFL has a lot more objective or mostly objective decisions to referee and challenge, as opposed to the almost 100% subjective decisions that soccer has. And when you had subjective rules to challenge, ie pass interference, they NEVER reversed the decision
To put a finer point on this, the subjective reviews and challenges of foul calls in the NBA are the closest thing we see to what VAR is in soccer. Those calls are always extremely subjective and still generate a lot of controversy. Exhibit A is the foul call at the end of Game 6 of the OKC-Dallas series. People are still talking about that play. Video review works a lot better with objective calls- two feet inbounds for football, who touched the ball last in basketball, was the ball on the line in tennis. When you start reviewing subjective calls, it's just adding subjectivity onto subjectivity.
Yeah, and “subjectivity” means re-refereeing, which everyone says they don’t want VAR doing but functionally it has become that. Technically, “clear and obvious” errors that VAR is really supposed to be used for would be theoretically “objective” if they were so badly missed that VAR needed to be used.
Given how traditional everything around the FA Cup normally is, I’m surprised to see the referee crew wearing yellow when they could have easily worn black with City and United in their traditional primary colors.
Colour on TV. The FA is surprisingly aware of colour-blindness issues. Manchester's red doesn't have a good contrast with black on TVs and can cause issue for large swatches of people suffering from colour blindness issues.
Halaand shoved in the back in the penalty area while attempting to head a cross 30 seconds into the game. Clear penalty. But since it's an FA Cup Final we don't give those.
75’ - Haaland taken down with an excellent Greco-Roman throw. No call, and VAR apparently thinks that isn’t a clear and obvious error. If VAR proponents want to understand why there are a lot of opponents to VAR, that play is a good exhibit. But I know saying anything is like spitting into the wind, so I should remind myself to just shake my head, chuckle, and move on.