All of the talk over the past few days has been on how Simon Hooper and VAR, Darren England, and Dan Cook, who all oversaw the Tottenham v Liverpool game, could’ve got the Luis Diaz decision so wrong.
What the decision highlighted was arguably the incompetence of the officials using it together with the lines of communication. It has to be a watershed moment for the technology or else there is simply no coming back from it.
There is simply no justification for getting things so wrong, and a ‘sorry it won’t happen again’ type apology absolutely won’t suffice in this instance.
For all of the good work that has been done since the implementation of VAR, it only needs instances like the weekend’s to send everything right back to square one again.
CaughtOffside columnist, Ben Jacobs, is one of those to go against the grain, however, by suggesting that VAR needn’t be canned just yet.
“The most obvious solution is to allow for a grace period of 15-20 seconds after play resumes to correct a VAR error made solely down to miscommunication or any other form of extenuating circumstances,” he said in his exclusive Daily Briefing column.
“VAR should also consider changing its language. Given every goal is checked anyway there is really no reason to be saying ‘check complete’ (as protocol dictates) instead of just ‘goal’ or ‘no goal’, which is far clearer.
“[…] Some may simply say just scrap VAR, but I strongly disagree. Let’s not forget Diaz would also have wrongly been given offside without VAR as well because that was the on-field decision.”
With the audio between the on-pitch officials and those at Stockley Park still not having been released to the public, one can infer that PGMOL are trying to strategise their damage limitation exercise behind the scenes, though it’s difficult to see how any one involved in the game can come out of this with their head held high.
The hope would be that this can be learned from to ensure that it never happens again.
Who cares what he thinks, he’s just another voice? Here’s my voice: get rid! I go to my team’s games as a season ticket holder and nobody ever asked me if I wanted this.