VAR is not the problem
The issue is those who are using video assistance and making decisions without any common sense. This is a referee problem.
The incompetence at this level of the game is bad for European Football. The referees always get away with it with no repercussions. The players, the managers & the clubs will pay for their mistakes while these referees just move on to the next match.
Until the referees are held accountable for their decisions this sport is not enjoyable to watch anymore. If they find the job difficult then find someone who is capable of doing the job.
The state of refereeing now is so so bad that I t might not even be wild to speculate that this seems to be a planned execution by the referees association to discredit the use of video assistance, so the game will go back to being played the old way where their decision is the final and they don’t have to refer to a third party.
How difficult can it be to make a decision with the help of VAR ? It has to be such a useful a tool. It makes no sense as to why it’s being implemented so poorly.
I honestly would be in full support of AI to replace these humans who seem completely incapable of using their common sense.
It’s hard to justify talking time to watch this sport when someone’s lack of common sense can completely ruin the competition & fun in football.
I mean I literally said in my comment why cricket is a bad comparison, but I’d love to see Rugby style refereeing in football. The only problem is that the change in culture required for it to be effective is a long way away unfortunately
That’s why I suggest pulling in experts from other sports rather than upskilling football referees.
To be honest I don’t think we do that enough, football has this silly notion of needing all its participants to have been sat at the alter of its greatness all their lives.
In subjective decisions, like is a foul, yes. But offside, for example, is objective. Cricket deals with this with umpires call. A similar system could be introduced for close offsides, with Lino’s call for close ones, say <> 30cm
I can already picture the outrage when one of the big teams have a goal that was onside given as offside on the field of play and it was a close onside so the referees decision is stuck with. Imagine one players shoulder is a close onside in one incident and in another incident another players foot is a close offside but the first was given offside and the latter onside on-field - you will get calls of corruption - especially if it happens to benefit a Man City or Liverpool.