Is VAR ruining The Beautiful Game? By Rory O’S and Charlie G

Have you ever watched a Premier League beauty  of a goal and it only to be ruled off by VAR ?

VAR (Virtual Assistant Referee) was created to correct clear wrong decisions that the referees sometimes cannot spot but instead it has made  more controversy than before VAR. The people involved within are the FA, fans, and the players. The reason all this controversy is happening is because ever since VAR got put into the Premier League, the best and the most watched football league. These passionate fans do have high expectations and it was meant to correct errors and make the League even better but instead it has changed the game completely. Now the Premier League admits “VAR decisions are too slow and is spoiling the enjoyment” now the Premier League have realised this they have set up a petition that if 14/20 clubs vote for it to be scrapped which is very unlikely but at least, they know it is changing the game completely.

Fan’s opinion 

We interviewed our head of sport and massive Liverpool fan Mr Robinson and we asked him several hard and intriguing questions about his general thoughts of VAR. His original opinion of VAR when it was released was that he thought it would be generational and would change the game in a good way, but now he has a completely new thought of it. He said that it has ruined his enjoyment of the game and the entertainment factor has gone downhill. Then he pointed out that the main disadvantage with VAR in football is “the fans in the stadium don’t even know what’s happening and they have no clue what the decision is.”  He suggests that if they show the fans in the stadium what is happening, like rugby  and they can hear what is going on, people might enjoy VAR more but overall he definitely would like it  to be scrapped.

Ex semi pro-opinion 

We interviewed ex semi pro and now Deputy Head of our school The Beacon, who played in FA Cup qualifiers Mr Miles. He was asked about VAR and what was his opinion. He told us that he is not a fan of VAR. His first reason was that when VAR wasn’t in the game, the fact that decisions didn’t go your team’s way all the time added more excitement and uncertainty to the game, but now VAR has come into the game you can’t have those fun debates because it just takes away that factor. He would personally scrap it. Mr Miles said, “one thing I would keep from VAR is the goal line technology which I think is the only positive about VAR.” we then asked him would he have wanted VAR when he played. He said no he wouldn’t, the only thing he would have  liked was the goal line technology. He said he would not want it mainly because it adds excitement and uncertainty and builds you up and makes you more passionate about It and made him play better.

The conclusion of the interviews and what VAR was meant to be we think that it is not just ruining the game it is changing it completely and making it not as enjoyable for fans. When your team scores instead of jumping out of joy and being so confident that your goal will count, now your pure joy of celebrating a goal gets stopped by VAR and not being certain if it counts or not. We think that the main thing fans get frustrated about and even if they’re trying to scrap it, the number of clubs that have to say yes to scrapping it is never going to happen. This why VAR is slowly ruining our beautiful game, in our opinion.