In recent years, technology has increasingly developed. It extends to everything, even sports. Like eagle eye technology in badminton and tennis, now, Football has begun to adopt technology in its game. After the use of goal line technology (Goal Line Technology or GLT), the use of communication tools between referees, now more new technologies are being added in football, namely by the use of video assistant referees (VAR), or in the Indonesian language the assistant video referees.
VAR was created to assist the main referee in making important decisions, such as ratifying goals, determining an incident whether it is worthy of a penalty or not, and awarding both yellow and red cards. The way it works is, when there is an odd incident, then the VAR referee will communicate with the main referee in the field, then, if the referee wants to ascertain whether the incident or the odd incident is true, the referee can go to the sidelines, to see the screen has been provided which contains replays from various angles.
Then, if you are sure of the decision, the referee can return to the field to give his decision. VAR itself has begun to be applied by FIFA as the highest football association in the world in several events, such as the 2017 Confederations Cup and the 2018 World Cup in Russia. A number of football lovers initially doubted this technology, because, so far, football is indeed famous for various dramas that occur in it. It is true, VAR should exist, to minimize the controversy in football.
After the success of the 2018 World Cup in Russia, several European leagues took the initiative to apply VAR to their competition, including the UEFA Champions League. Of course, we still remember how Manchester City had to fail in the quarter-finals after losing to Tottenham Hotspurs in the aggregate away goals at the time. In fact, in the second leg that took place at the Etihad Stadium at the time, in the final minutes Raheem Sterling managed to score a goal to change the score to 5-3. However, after being reviewed by the referee, the goal was disallowed, because, at the time the feeder, Sergio Aguero was already in an offside position.
As a result, Pep Guardiola, who was already excited, had to be looked down embarrassed because his team again failed to advance to the semifinals after being crushed in the previous season by Liverpool. After several leagues have started implementing VAR, the English League began to do the same thing in the 2019-2020 season. As a league that is watched by millions and maybe even billions of people around the world, of course, whatever happens in the English League will be in the spotlight, including the use of this VAR.
The use of VAR in the English League is quite interesting, because its use is different from what we have seen in other European leagues and the World Cup. This is quite interesting controversy. I want to highlight the controversy that occurred in two matches in the English League in Week 26, namely the Southampton vs Burnley match and Chelsea vs Manchester United. The first game, Southampton who met with Burnley on St. Mary Stadium on February 15, 2020 yesterday, ended with a score of 1-2 for the Burnley victory.
However, there was an incident of controversy here, when the ball was about to be passed by a Southampton player about the hand of one of Burnley’s players. In fact, when the ball was clear about the hand of the opposing player, however, VAR decided there was no penalty for the incident. In addition, the match that just took place early this morning, between Chelsea vs Manchester United which took place at Stamford Bridge also gave rise to controversy. At least, there are three controversies debated by football lovers. The match ended with a score of 0-2 for the victory of the Red Devils, in fact Chelsea were able to score two goals. However, these two goals were disallowed by the referee.
In the first goal scored by Kurt Zouma, the goal was disallowed because before Kurt Zouma scored, there was a foul committed by Azpilicueta who was seen pushing Brandon Williams. While the second goal by Giroud, Giroud was in an offside position. These two annulled goals are actually highly debatable. In the first goal, indeed Azpilicueta was seen to be pushing at the time, but the urge was due to Fred’s share of the mischievous push of Azpilicueta. Of course Azpilicueta is normal for reflexes after being pushed due to loss of balance, of course her hands are looking for a support so as not to fall, therefore she looks like pushing Brandon Williams.
Whereas the second goal, Giroud is actually stuck in an offside position can be said to be only a foot, only a few centimeters of it seems, but this seems to be still understandable, this shows that once the VAR precision to the slightest incident can be considered, even though in plain view of course Giroud can still be said to be onside. In addition, there was a violation committed by Harry Maguire to Michy Batshuayi. Maguire deserves a yellow card and even a red card, however, VAR said there was no contact which resulted in Maguire being rewarded.
Apart from the above incident, there are still many other controversial decisions that occurred in the Premier League in the previous weeks, all referees’ decisions are very dependent on VAR. Herein lies the misguided referees of the English League. As I said before, VAR is here to help the referee in making important decisions, not to determine what decisions are made, because that is the main referee’s job. VAR position is equivalent to assistant referees 1 and 2 who are on the sidelines.
Sometimes, when the line-man has raised the flag, the referee also often has different views. In fact, in the English league, it seems that VAR has taken over the role of the referee for decision making. Evidently, in the existing decisions, everything is really determined by the VAR, not the referee, which looks like the referee “just confirm” what the VAR said. Of course, with the remaining 12 weeks, there will be other controversies that occur as if the perception of the Premier League referee is still the same as this.
Apparently, the hope of football lovers to continue to have drama has been granted through the application of VAR which actually gave birth to other controversies in football, especially the English League. Indeed, that’s how Soccer is with all the sundries of controversy and drama that are in it.
ASL
