Football’s Next Big Change Set To Take The World By Storm In 2022
VAR. It seems as if it was introduced yesterday. In many respects, it is relatively recent. While VAR itself was first tested in the 12-13 Eriedivisie season, 9 seasons ago now, this is only its 3rd season of use in the Premier League – the most talked about league in the English speaking media. Generally it has been a positive change with the need for taking second looks at plays that the referee or the linespeople may not have noticed given the ever increasing speed of the game. Long gone are the days where you get 2 points for a win and you could get away with 55 points to win the league. That was how refereeing was structured before the implementation of VAR. However, VAR has a human element too, and while they have weeded out most of the shady calls and poorly called games, they haven’t got them all out. This is where the newest change in refereeing comes in, trying to exterminate poor calls and badly reffed games forever. Robot VAR.
What is Robot VAR?
Instead of using error able humans, there’s a reason the saying is “He’s only human” and not “He’s only a robot”. You may think that the experience of refereeing will be the same, only that instead of Human VAR referees, it is automated. However, the Robot VAR will completely change the way refereeing takes place. Under the roof of each stadium there will be 12 cameras to track the players limbs that track 50 movements per second. Also, instead of unintelligible lines being placed on the broadcast, FIFA is aiming to make their offside calls more like Goal Line Technology. Yes, this is what you think it is. The format for showing offside calls will be completely different. Marcelo Lewkowicz (@marcelolewko) posted a tweet of an offside call from the robot VAR, as yes, this is already being used in competitions, being introduced in the FIFA Club World Cup, where it has already disallowed a goal for offside, and will be used in the World Cup in Qatar later this year. That is the thick of what Robot VAR is.
What are the benefits of Robot VAR?
First, it will help remove the interpretation of the laws of the game when deciding calls. The robot has been coded to do something when something happens, and it will always do the same thing – make the same call in the same way every time. For those of us who believes that too many referees have a bias, it puts clubs on a level playing field when it comes to this sort of thing. Also, the new camera system and the elimination of humans doing this work reduces the time it takes to make a VAR decision from minutes to seconds, speeding up the game. The way I’ve interpreted it is, people will still be in the VAR booth, but only to communicate decisions and be a backup if something happens to the robot VAR. Also, the new format for showing offsides is much more clear and reduces confusion.
The drawbacks?
Of course, it is automation, meaning more referees are losing their jobs. The losing of jobs is a tragic thing, especially if you’ve trained all your life to be the next Pierluigi Collina. The loss of interpretation of rules also has referees losing some of their personality, but of course, they are still refereeing the rest of the game. Also, for Jose Mourinho, his classic excuse of the referee having a campaign against his team is slowly becoming more invalid. The most obvious drawback that will be sighted is the fact that it must be programmed by humans and so it can be programmed in error. I believe that is an argument that will be gone within the first year of this technology’s wide adoption. Other than that, no drawbacks that should be mentioned. However, there will always be those people who believe that errors made by human referees are part of the game and always have been and to eliminate those is to change the game in some way. For me, I’d rather know my team won or lost because of their efforts, not because an official had an axe to grind or needed a new prescription for his eye glasses.
I just hope the football world welcomes this change with open arms. I certainly am, it’s eliminating most of the bad things about VAR. The amount of time it takes to do a check, the interpretation of the rules, The human error, etc. People will still blame referees, but here is one less thing to blame. I think that this will be seen as a vastly positive change. I’m Jim James, until next time.