The game must embrace Video Assisted Referees

Last week, Ghanaian referee was banned for life by Fifa for awarding a penalty to South Africa in their world cup qualifier against Senegal last November. No one saw or asked for the penalty, but it cost Senegal the game. The game has way too many such incidents of either a dubious nature or plain old human error, I couldn’t list all of them. But still Football refuses to shed its primeval nature, choosing instead to remain at the mercy of human limitations, which itself puts tremendous pressure on the men in the middle and further affects their productivity.

By making or not making those calls the officials change the course of games or history as the more dramatic would say. The discussion on whether it is down to human error or sheer incompetence is irrelevant in the face of the contentious impact delivered. And that is really what makes the case for the introduction of technology assistants. The game needs technology if it is to come unstuck from its old ways. And it seems that time has finally arrived.

Last week, I chanced on a document from the International Football Association Board’s (IFAB) Annual Business meeting from November 2016. It reveals some interesting suggestions for revisions in the laws of the game, among which are temporary dismissals (sin bins), 4th substitutes in extra time and Video Assistant Referees (VAR).

It is Video Assistant Referees that caught my fancy. Apparently, some progress has been made in this area with several experiments already carried out in over 20 competitions so far. The idea here is minimum interference and maximum benefit. What that means is that VAR will only be applied to right a clear wrong by the referee, and in only key game-changing incidents like goals, penalty situations and direct red cards. It’s a few months late for Senegal, but still.

Of course, there will be heightened distrust from the games’ romantics who would rather football continues in its pure unadulterated manner that gives it this uncanny ability to mirror the randomness of life.

But as a compliment to goal line technology, VAR can only be a positive development. And let’s be honest, most times change is not as terrifying as we perceive it to be. For instance, football took to goal-line technology like a duck to water. I don’t see that VAR will be any different.

Besides, football today is a high stakes enterprise that can no longer rely on human limitations. I also don’t see how the use of technology in Rugby or Cricket watered down the appeal of those sports. If anything, it has reduced the ill effects of human error.

So, provided any changes in the laws of the game are done in the spirit of fairness and inclusion, as suggested by the IFAB strategy, then I don’t see the changes as anything but progress. Information Technology doesn’t solve all the games challenges, that much is correct, but as a matter of evolution the game should embrace it.
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