Baby steps in the right direction. We need more openness in referee decisions and a more collaborative approach among the on-field ref team for VAR decisions.
Definitely steps in the right direction, really not sure why it wasn’t implemented like that from the beginning. One of the few things they get right in the NFL.
Yeah, Rugby’s had a much better approach with TMO (it’a version of VAR) - basically if you’re watching on TV the director can switch the audio (and often does) to the ref conversation with the TMO and rest of the ref team.
I remember watching NFL a couple of times and thing the ref explanations were fantastic.
In football, referees generally have some kind of rationale for their decisions. Sometimes they are simply wrong (see the bad offside call in Juventus - Salernitana), but generally, explaining it and getting consensus with the rest of the ref team will carry the fans along with the refs’ logic. And if they’re regularly wrong, the exposure will make them either up their game, or change rules to make their application more realistic.
Baby steps for sure. It’s taken way too long to get to this, but at least they are making progresss.
The most frustrating thing about VAR is how easy it would be to have a sensible system by basically just copying how other sports do it. This seems like a step in the right direction, so I’m all for it.
