The restoration of English football: Premier votes to abolish VAR

The twenty clubs will vote on June 6th. The Telegraph: "It's all caught on TV, the referees will be the only ones who don't see the mistakes"

ROME – Everyone against VAR. In Italy we remain on the Sunday controversy level, in Sweden they never even wanted to introduce it, and in England… well: in England they will now go to the vote to eliminate it. There is an air of refereeing restoration in the Premier League. The Premier League clubs will decide whether or not to abolish the VAR during next month’s assembly. It was Wolverhampton who put the request in the minutes by formally presenting the resolution that will lead the twenty clubs to a vote when they meet in Harrogate on 6 June.

Introduced “in good faith ” in 2019, according to many, it only exacerbated the arbitration problem, poisoning the already bad context. “The price we are paying for a small increase in accuracy is at odds with the spirit of our game,” Wolves said in a statement. The Premier League said it “acknowledges the concerns” but “fully supports” the technology and will continue to work with the referees body Pgmol (Professional Game Match Officials Board) to make improvements.

The press, however, warns : there’s no going back now. It would be madness. “It would be absurd – writes the Telegraph – Too much money and too much time has been invested in perfecting a system that if removed overnight, would simply put them back to where they were before.” Or worse, because for the English newspaper the problem is not so much VAR but the diffusion of television replays. “The referees have always made mistakes. Rather, the problem is that all-encompassing television coverage, with its HD super slow-motion replaying every controversial incident, allows all those bloopers to be watched in seconds by a global audience in razor-sharp detail. Before the VAR, the only man who was or was not aware of that error was the referee“. Even without VAR, things wouldn’t change. “The matches would still be judged on television, but by experts who cannot correct mistakes on the pitch.”