It seems that every day comes with another example of VAR failing to do it’s job or mistakes still being made despite the technology being introduced.
It’s easy to forget that before the system came into play, we had constant headlines about bad decisions costing teams and abject refereeing performances, so the outcome is still the same – we just have a different thing to blame.
We’ve seen various examples of the system not working properly and causing controversy. We saw a report from Marca claim that certain images had been altered in one game to ensure a certain decision was reached, while another game prompted calls for a replay after a penalty was incorrectly given.
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The recent Man United vs Arsenal game gave us a good example of the system working properly, after the assistant had failed to spot the 6″3 figure of Harry Maguire standing literally yards in front of him and disallowed a goal.
But we may have reached the absolute peak of VAR controversy. This report from The Middle East claims that a game in the Saudi Arabian league was affected because somebody unplugged the system to allow them to charge their mobile phone instead:
????? “????????”: ??? ???? ????? VAR ?? ?????? ????? ?????? ?? ??? ??? ???????? ?? ?????? ??????? ?????? ???????? ???? ??? ????? ????? ??? ???? ???? ???????? ?? ??????? ??????? ???????..
— ????? ???????? (@ariyadhiah) October 7, 2019
Because it happened in a fairly minor league, it probably won’t gather a big deal of attention. Could you image in the absolute chaos that would ensue if this happened in a Premier League game?