Ammar AlQarahdaghi
Technical Report (Draft) – VAR In Football
Introduction:
VAR is a new technology that has come upon Football and many other sports in the last decade. It is a technology that could help the referee during the match. In many cases, VAR could stop a bad decision from happening. Many sports, such as tennis, use this technology in different ways.
In basketball, specifically the NBA, there is a technology very similar to the one used in Football. It is called Instant Replay. This Idea was first introduced to the league in the 2002/03 season, back when Tim Duncan won his second championship. Instant Replay allows the refs to have a second chance while doing their job. It was initially used for buzzer-beater shots only. However, it has evolved to cover many things, such as making calls on fouls, ejecting players, and other aspects of the sport.
VAR was introduced to the football world in 2016. It was incorporated in most big-flight leagues in the 2018/19 season. Controversy has risen from the moment the technology came to the football world. So, the question is, does VAR technology do more good to Football than it does bad?
Body:
In order to know exactly how VAR effects a football game, here are some crucial statistics.
On average, a single football game has around 6 stops throughout the game due to the use of VAR. (I will show here my own statistics of me watching several games and recording how many stops there would be)
The average review time of a single VAR intervention varies between 20 seconds to 2 minutes. (I will also provide my own statistics of me watching the games)
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Although the technology that VAR uses is impressive and improves judgment accuracy. It still isn’t entirely correct, which is an issue. While the frames used by VAR to analyze the situation in still photos are incredibly close together, the instant a football is kicked may occur in-between two frames, which may change whether a player is onside or offside and, as a result, whether a goal is allowed or not. More camera angles with greater manipulation, as well as a reduction of the gap between frames, are required to improve the accuracy of determining when exactly the ball is kicked. The way cameras can be adjusted in the Football game plays a good part in that.
Conclusion:
VAR has the ability to overturn match deciding decisions that were made by the main referee on the pitch. The main issue I see is the fact that it wastes a lot of time in decisions that the referee takes. It is solely the referees’ responsibility to make the right decision, as it has been for many years.