Before my life as a data nerd, I spent a number of years as an amateur cricket umpire. I worked hard at it, progressed through the ranks, stood in some good cricket, and generally achieved more than I ever expected to when I first took an umpiring course.
But despite all of that, I still made mistakes. Every umpire does. In fact, every official in every sport does.
Whether you’re standing in the middle of a club cricket match or refereeing a Premier League game in front of 60,000 people, you’re still human, and human beings make mistakes. That’s not a criticism. It’s simply reality.
My biggest regret as an umpire was never the mistakes themselves. It was the fact that there was no way to fix them.
There were occasions where a decision left my finger and, almost immediately, I realised I might have got it wrong. Perhaps I’d picked up the wrong sound. Perhaps I’d been screened for a split second. Perhaps I’d simply misjudged what I’d seen. But once the decision had been made, that was it.
That is why I have always been a supporter of DRS in cricket.
When DRS was first introduced, there was plenty of resistance. Some felt it would undermine umpires. Others worried that it would slow down a game that was already not known for its brisk pace. There were concerns that cricket would effectively be officiated differently at different levels depending on whether the technology was available, and there was also the long-standing tradition that the umpire’s decision should simply be accepted and the game should move on.
Looking back, some of those concerns had merit. Even today, cricket at international level is officiated differently from most amateur cricket. But I think it’s fair to say that the benefits have overwhelmingly outweighed the drawbacks. Players now have a far better appreciation for how difficult officiating actually is, umpires no longer carry the burden of an irreversible mistake, and the conversation has largely shifted away from blaming officials and towards evaluating evidence. DRS is not perfect, but I think most people involved in professional cricket would regard it as a success.
Which brings me to football.
Because I don’t think the problem with VAR is the technology. I think the problem is that football has created a compromise that is slowly becoming impossible to defend.
To be fair, the principles behind the current system all sound sensible when viewed in isolation. We don’t want constant interruptions. We don’t want a video official re-refereeing every incident. We don’t want to undermine the authority of the referee. We want reviews to be completed quickly so that the game can continue.
The problem is that when you try to optimise for all of those objectives simultaneously, you end up with something that satisfies none of them.
We now have a system that exists to correct mistakes, but regularly leaves decisions in place that many observers believe are wrong because they are not considered wrong enough to overturn. We have a review process that is supposed to increase confidence in officiating, but largely takes place behind closed doors. We have retained the authority of the referee, yet the referee who made the original decision is often reduced to a surprisingly passive role in the review process. And we have a system designed to improve accuracy while simultaneously placing enormous pressure on officials to complete reviews as quickly as possible.
The result is what feels, at times, like the worst of all worlds.
Football’s defenders will often point out that cricket is simply easier to review than football. I think that is true. Cricket naturally lends itself to technology. Every ball is a discrete event. The action starts, the action ends, and play stops. Most major decisions happen within the same small area, and the umpire is generally positioned in the best possible place to observe them.
Football is very different. Play is continuous. Twenty-two players are moving simultaneously. Incidents can happen anywhere on the field. Referees are managing positioning, advantage, player behaviour, timekeeping and countless other responsibilities all at once.
But I don’t think that fully explains the difference.
The bigger issue is that football contains a huge amount of subjectivity. Even after multiple replays, intelligent and experienced football people frequently disagree. Was there enough contact for a penalty? Was the challenge reckless? Was there excessive force? Did the player gain an unfair advantage?
Cricket, by comparison, is often attempting to answer a series of relatively narrow questions. Did the ball hit the bat? Did it pitch in line? Did it strike the batter in line? Would it have gone on to hit the stumps?
There can still be uncertainty, which is why concepts such as Umpire’s Call exist, but everyone is generally trying to work through the same questions in the same order.
Football, on the other hand, often appears to start from a different place. Rather than asking, “What is the correct decision?”, it frequently seems to ask, “Is the original decision wrong enough to overturn?”
That distinction sounds subtle, but I think it lies at the heart of many of the frustrations supporters have with VAR.
Rugby Offers A Better Model
One of the most interesting comparisons for me isn’t cricket. It’s rugby.
Like football, rugby is a continuous game played across a large area. Incidents happen quickly, players are moving at speed, and physical contact is at the centre of the game. Supporters, players and commentators disagree with officials all the time.
Yet rugby’s review process generally seems to attract far less hostility than football’s.
I don’t think that’s because rugby officials are better than football officials. Nor do I think it’s because rugby has somehow eliminated subjectivity. Anyone who has watched rugby regularly will know that supporters can argue for days about dangerous tackles, yellow cards and red cards.
The difference, as I see it, is that rugby has made a conscious effort to build a framework around decision-making.
When a dangerous tackle is reviewed, the officials don’t seem to start with the question, “Is the on-field referee wrong?” Instead, they work through a series of questions designed to help them reach a conclusion. Was there head contact? Was there foul play? What was the degree of danger? Was there mitigation?
The answers may still involve subjective judgement, but everyone understands the process that led to the outcome.
Football rarely feels like it operates in the same way. Instead of systematically working through evidence, it often appears to start with the original decision and then ask whether that decision crosses some threshold for intervention.
That distinction is subtle, but I think it matters enormously.
As soon as your objective changes from finding the correct outcome to deciding whether something is “wrong enough” to overturn, consistency becomes much harder to achieve. That is particularly true in a sport that already contains so much subjectivity.
I don’t think football can ever eliminate subjectivity entirely. Nor should it try to. Refereeing will always involve judgement. But there is a big difference between a subjective decision reached through a structured process and a subjective decision that appears arbitrary. Rugby, in my view, has done a better job of recognising that distinction.
Transparency Matters
The other lesson football could learn from rugby and cricket is transparency.
One of the reasons DRS works as well as it does is that everybody gets to see the process. The television audience sees the same replays as the officials. They hear the discussion. They understand which evidence is being considered and why.
Similarly, in rugby, the conversation between the referee and the TMO is part of the spectacle. Supporters inside the ground and viewers at home can hear the officials working through the incident. They may not agree with the conclusion, but they at least understand how it was reached.
Football has largely chosen a different approach.
Supporters know discussions are taking place, but they rarely hear them. The crowd in the stadium is often given very little information beyond a brief announcement that a check is taking place. A decision then emerges from a process that nobody has really been allowed to observe.
The result is predictable. People fill the gaps themselves.
The famous “high bar” for intervention has become one of the most discussed concepts in football officiating, yet I suspect most supporters couldn’t clearly define what it actually means in practice. That’s not because football supporters are unreasonable. It’s because the process itself isn’t particularly visible.
Over the past few days I’ve spent some time listening to the released audio around the Haaland incident from last weekend, and one thing struck me more than anything else. There seemed to be a constant awareness of time.
The officials weren’t simply trying to make a decision. They were trying to make a decision quickly.
That is understandable. Nobody wants lengthy delays, and nobody wants the game constantly interrupted. But if football chooses to use technology to support referees, then perhaps it has to accept that important decisions sometimes take time.
At the moment, football seems to be optimising for speed because delays create frustration. But delays only create frustration because supporters are excluded from the process.
If the crowd can see the evidence and hear the discussion, that delay stops feeling like dead time.
In fact, I would argue that once a review has been initiated, the refereeing team should effectively be taken off the clock.
I’m not necessarily talking about stopping the match clock itself, although that could certainly be considered. What I mean is that once VAR says, “I think we need to look at this”, the primary objective should no longer be speed. It should be accuracy.
The referee should be brought into the conversation. The discussion should be transparent. The officials should be allowed to work methodically through the evidence and through an agreed protocol without worrying about whether the review is taking thirty seconds longer than people would like.
Imagine something as simple as:
VAR: “I’ve seen something here that could go either way. I think we need to work through it.”
Referee: “The incident is under review.”
VAR: “Question one. Was there contact?”
Referee: “Yes.”
VAR: “Question two. Who initiated the contact?”
Referee: “The defender.”
VAR: “Question three. Was the challenge careless, reckless, or neither?”
And so on until a conclusion is reached.
Will supporters still disagree? Of course they will. That’s football. But they will at least understand how the decision was reached.
Ironically, an additional minute spent reviewing an incident properly would generate less controversy than a rushed decision that dominates the post-match discussion for the next three days.
Supporters will always argue about football. That’s part of the reason we love it. But people are generally far more willing to accept decisions they disagree with than decisions they don’t understand.
Football Needs To Choose
For me, all of this leads to a fairly simple conclusion.
The current version of VAR is trying to achieve too many conflicting objectives at once. It wants to preserve the authority of the referee, minimise interruptions, keep reviews short, avoid re-refereeing incidents and improve accuracy. Unfortunately, trying to optimise all of those things simultaneously is producing a system that often struggles to achieve any of them particularly well.
So I increasingly think football needs to make a choice.
The first option is to scale VAR back dramatically. Keep goal-line technology. Keep factual offside decisions. Everything else becomes the responsibility of the on-field officials. Penalties, handballs, yellow cards and red cards are judged in real time with no technological intervention.
There would be mistakes, of course. There always have been. But there would at least be clarity about what the system is trying to achieve.
The second option is the one I would favour.
If football wants VAR, then it should fully embrace it rather than treating it as an awkward compromise.
Reviews should be transparent. The crowd and television audience should hear the conversation between officials. The referee should remain the final decision-maker on subjective incidents and should actively participate in the review process. Decisions should be guided by clearly defined protocols that reduce subjectivity wherever possible. Reviews should be allowed to take the time they need, without everyone feeling pressured to clear them as quickly as possible.
I would also expand the scope slightly. If VAR can intervene to recommend a straight red card, I see little reason why it should not be able to intervene when a player is about to receive an obviously incorrect second yellow. Equally, if a potential red-card incident is reviewed and found not to meet that threshold, there should be scope for the review process to recommend a yellow card where appropriate.
In short, either trust referees completely or give them the tools, the process and the time required to make better decisions.
What feels increasingly unsustainable is the current middle ground. We have a system that exists to correct errors but sometimes leaves obviously controversial decisions untouched. A system that promises transparency while largely operating out of sight. A system that wants accuracy but also seems to want everything done as quickly as possible.
Football doesn’t have a technology problem.
It has a design problem.
And until the game decides whether VAR exists primarily to protect referees or to help them reach the correct decision, I suspect the debate will continue exactly as it is today.