Comment

Champions League drama at Etihad proves VAR can add to football's magic

Raheem Sterling's stoppage time winner was over-ruled by VAR 
Raheem Sterling's stoppage time winner was over-ruled by VAR  Credit: Getty Images

It was after a 6-1 demolition of Rochdale, strangely enough, that Mauricio Pochettino declared without hesitation that the video assistant referee was stripping the emotion out of football. “We must be careful when we change the game,” he said of last season’s lopsided FA Cup result, puzzled as to why disallowed goals for Erik Lamela and Son Heung-min had prevented Tottenham from meting out an even greater pummelling. “Rather than talking about the football, we talk about the machine.”

One wonders whether Pochettino still felt this way at the Etihad, when a VAR call to rule out Raheem Sterling’s third goal propelled Tottenham into the Champions League semi-finals and transformed the Argentine into a screaming, bug-eyed banshee, fit to burst with euphoria. If technology in football truly is incompatible with raw human drama, then this delirious manager was doing his best to prove the contrary.

Opinions can age quickly and inelegantly in modern sport: the notion of Tiger Woods as a fading nostalgia act, for example. But obstinate opposition to VAR is becoming more problematic by the day. For a start, both its key decisions on a night of mayhem in Manchester: absolving Fernando Llorente of intentional handball, then chalking off Sterling’s injury-time strike once Sergio Aguero was found to have drifted offside – were correct. To resist its encroachment is essentially to say that you would rather the outcome of this week’s grand theatre, a singularly breathless and finely-poised European quarter-final, had been wrong.

To claim, though, that VAR’s main weakness is its negation of the game’s natural highs and lows might be the perversely antediluvian take of all.

Already, the 91st and 92nd minutes of Wednesday’s action are being celebrated among the most convulsive, draining and just plain wild passages of play in living memory. In 120 seconds, pandemonium gave way to doubt, confusion, desolation and finally silence, save for the distant crowing of Tottenham fans who could not believe their luck. Football has seldom known such emotional extremes, and all of them were orchestrated, by the hidden hand of VAR.

Pep Guardiola and his Man City teams celebrations were premature
Pep Guardiola and his Man City teams celebrations were premature Credit: Getty Images

It was, in many ways, the perfect denouement to such a match, one that began in sixth gear and never relented, the outcome constantly perched – courtesy of the away-goals rule – on a ragged edge. This was a symphony deserving of a crescendo. To argue that VAR distorted, even detracted from its fluctuating rhythms is to be antagonistic for the sake of it. The abiding lesson from the Etihad’s demented final act is that VAR, far from sanitising the sport, has come to provide an extra layer of intrigue.

Tellingly, both managers accepted the result as part of football’s inherent unpredictability, as an illustration of its glory and its cruelty. From Pep Guardiola, there was no griping about the bitter twist with which City had been denied. From Pochettino, there were no echoes of his response to that fifth-round FA Cup replay against Rochdale, no suggestions that VAR’s intervention had softened the thrilling last moments. Both understood that video replays were now woven inextricably into the game’s rich tapestry.

The chief objection to VAR, from those who appear to value rank injustice above brief checks for accuracy, is that it deadens the instantaneous nature of football. Across the Bundesliga, hostility has been especially fierce, with Bayern Munich supporters unfurling a banner to pronounce that “modern football kills emotion” and Borussia Dortmund’s “Yellow Wall” striking up a chant of “You’re destroying our sport” for Uefa’s benefit.

Such peevishness flows from a perception of the fan experience, within stadiums at least, as somehow sacrosanct. How dare officials’ cold technical debates be allowed to obstruct fans’ spontaneous eruptions of joy? Far better, the hardliners cry, for a marginal call to be wrong than for the celebrations of a goal to be rudely interrupted. It is a peculiar position to take, an example of purist attitudes scrambling good sense. So what if certain difficult judgments must be fleetingly deferred?

Tottenham fans travelling back from Manchester did not think any less of Llorente’s goal just because it needed to be validated with a second opinion. But had their Champions League campaign been derailed by a demonstrably offside Sterling winner, you can be sure that the sense of injustice would have festered for years.

It is pointless to keep howling down the forces of progress. Too much rests on the biggest games for avoidable errors to be tolerated any longer. For a start, to shrug off an erroneous decision as just another case of football’s caprice is to neglect the impact upon the official concerned. At Euro 2004, referee Urs Meier controversially disallowed a late England goal against Portugal – having spotted, he said, a shove by John Terry on the goalkeeper – and awoke to such tabloid headlines as “You Swiss Banker”.

About 5,000 abusive phone calls and 16,000 hate-emails would follow. In 2005, Anders Frisk slipped quietly into retirement, weary of death threats over his handling of Chelsea’s Champions League defeat to Barcelona.

This is a sport where the faintest hint of ambiguity is weaponized. If referees make one false move at the highest level, their livelihoods – even their personal safety – can be at risk. Is this seriously a price worth paying for supporters’ impatience for instant resolutions? Quite frankly, given the history of vilification of honourable officials, fans’ feelings can go hang. Far better to make decisions right than to make them immediate.

All told, the tumultuous climax to Tottenham’s victory stands as the ultimate rebuke to VAR’s naysayers. Their objections have been shredded by a compelling demonstration of how the system, far from diluting the exhilaration of football, can enrich it. The VAR genie is out of the bottle, and not an ounce of magic has been lost.

License this content