12th October, 2023
There have been loud calls for VAR to be abolished following the unprecedented scenes in Liverpool’s late-September match against Tottenham Hotspur. The Reds were denied a legitimate goal owing to a breakdown in communication between the on-field referee and the VAR operators.
This type of mistake was the first of its kind in Premier League football since VAR was introduced at the start of the 2019/2020 season.
Unprecedented scenes in North London
Ordinarily, there’s conjecture about the interpretations of the laws of the game following a decision by VAR.
In this instance, the VAR team was unanimous in their decision-making but simply failed to deliver the verdict they had come to owing to an unprecedented misunderstanding. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this extraordinary blunder, which is reported in detail here at https://pmnewsnigeria.com/, has reignited the argument around VAR and its place in the Premier League.
In this instance, the failure to convey the right verdict following Luis Díaz’s goal could cost Liverpool dearly. Alarmingly, the odds of the Reds winning the Premier League, which can be seen here at https://www.nairabet.com/, rose sharply to +650 after the VAR debacle in North London. It’s easy to understand why the outcry against VAR has been so fierce.
The reality, however, is that this is not the time to do away with VAR. The system will be close to foolproof going forward as a result of the serious nature of what happened at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
VAR and its link to black boxes in the aviation industry
The best parallel to draw in a bid to prove how much more dependable VAR will be in the future is to compare it to the job that black boxes have done in improving safety in the aviation industry. In short, black boxes are used to provide flight data records and voice recordings from the flight deck.
Whenever there’s a significant incident in the industry, the first port of call for authorities is to find the black box, which will provide the answers as to what has gone wrong or failed, be it mechanical or human error.
Once they’ve had time to study the information stored in a black box, sweeping reform throughout the aviation industry normally follows in an effort to improve safety. The result of leaving no stone unturned when getting to the bottom of an incident is that flying is now the safest form of travel. Remarkably, 2009 was the last time a commercial airliner experienced a major incident in the United States.
The link to VAR is that everything that goes on when a decision is made is recorded in an attempt to eradicate mistakes from the overall process of establishing clear and obvious errors. Without these recordings, the world wouldn’t have been able to hear the astonishing exchange between officials and the VAR during Liverpool’s game with Spurs.
While the PGMOL should be applauded for its transparency, it wouldn’t have released the audio without having robust measures in place to ensure that it never happens again.
Ultimately, this is another step – albeit a painful one for Liverpool, in the process of ironing out all the issues with VAR. Just like flying didn’t become the safest form of travel overnight, VAR is going through its own process in the journey to becoming infallible.