If there’s anything more irritating than VAR interfering to award a fairly marginal looking decision, it’s the system failing to overturn clear and obvious errors. It’s almost like the threshold for overturning a non decision is far lower than the evidence needed to overturn something once a ref has awarded a penalty/red card.
Liverpool are tonight’s unlucky losers in the VAR outcome tombola, a penalty was awarded despite there clearly being no contact on the Napoli player. It’s not even like the player was trying to get out of the way to avoid contact, he actually throws himself to the floor in search of a penalty.
READ MORE: Video: VAR fails again in Serie A after failing to overturn outrageous penalty decision
The bigger problem is the longer this sort of thing goes on, it sets a precedent so future decisions wont be corrected because they want to show consistency.
Chris Sutton is never short of an opinion on Twitter, but it’s heard to disagree with him here:
Simulation… Clear and obvious error https://t.co/aZkFuCFm69
— Chris Sutton (@chris_sutton73) September 17, 2019
It’s going to be very interesting to see how the football authorities approach this, because the system they pushed to introduce is clearly not fit for purpose. They’ve managed to change football to a place where clearly diving is still encouraged, and a genuine tactic will now be to hammer the ball into a sea of bodies and hope it hits a hand.
The technology needs to be reviewed again. The goal line technology introduced recently has been fantastic because it’s a black and white decision. VAR has given refs a second chance to fix mistakes and it’s still not working.
No doubt the old line of “these things will even themselves out over a season” will get peddled out but that’s no way to justify the decisions being made.
In the words of the increasingly popular song being heard around Premier League grounds: “F*ck VAR”