I will love it if we beat them. You can’t win anything with kids. When the seagull follows the trawler. I am a special one. Time to add another unforgettable line to the history of the Premier League: “That’s wrong that, Daz.”
Four words of agonising paralysis from the VAR room. By the end it sounds like the black box recording of pilot and co-pilot careering into a mountain: “Can’t do anything.” “No.” “I can’t do anything.” Three seconds of silence. “[Expletive].”
In the middle of it, the superhero we never knew we needed – Mo Abby, the artist formerly known as UNNAMED REPLAY OPERATOR. “Are you happy with this?” he asks politely as the crisis unfolds in front of his eyes. Something like: “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DARREN, STOP!” might have been more appropriate. In the new Amazon Prime show ExVARsperated his pained face glances briefly straight down the barrel of the camera and then back to his computer.
What next for him? The Masked Singer, with Jonathan Ross and Rita Ora speculating from on high? “I know that voice from somewhere. Not even Sade sang it as well. Is it Mo Abby, the SMOOTH REPLAY OPERATOR?” He is helped in removing his giant porcupine head to reveal it is indeed he. Ross and Ora high five. The audience is mesmerised. There’s ticker tape. Within weeks he’s hosting Heart Breakfast.
The only other character than the replay operator to emerge with credit is Oli Kohout, the VAR hub operations executive. In a separate room headbutting a wall shouting “DELAY DELAY DELAY DELAY”. He’s probably still there yelling into the abyss. Like everyone else by now I’ve been on his LinkedIn page: four years at Hawk-Eye, a degree in sports technology and six years volunteering as a rollerblading coach at the Arena Leisure Centre in Camberley. Perhaps if he had spent less spare time generously showing kids how to do a figure of eight and instead become more effective at loudly despairing at generic middle-aged Englishmen we wouldn’t be in this mess.
But it’s not on him, nor on the replay operator. No, we are left with the VAR, Darren England and his assistant, Dan Cook, just not being good enough in the moment. How they must wish Luis Díaz had just screwed it wide. What would we have talked about this week?
Honestly, the audio sounds quite slick until the mistake. It’s very easy after the event to suggest we would all have dealt with it better. Get them to stop. Explain the issue to both managers. Get Spurs to allow Liverpool to walk one in. But if I recall every confrontation in my life or mistake I’ve made where I’ve thought of the right thing to say or do about three hours later, I can’t say with any confidence I wouldn’t have just frozen and hoped it all went away somehow.
The sensible suggestions have been made. Say words such as: “It’s a goal” or “It’s not a goal” (depending on whether it is a goal or not – good to be clear about these things). Have the audio available for every game as a matter of course – so it isn’t just released when there’s a fervour to throw a ref under the bus.
Create a working environment where everyone is confident to speak up. It is dangerous to read too much into one clip, but are the conditions such where the replay operator could highlight the mistake more forcefully without worrying about what the qualified officials might think of him? We have all worked in places where more junior members of staff are fearful of speaking their mind.
Do VARs have to be referees? They are different skills. How much would those in charge of it, the referees’ body PGMOL, benefit from hiring from a wider pool of people?
It doesn’t seem sensible to be travelling to the Middle East for an exhibition game on the Thursday before a Premier League match two days later. It feels different to doing a Europa League match, even if the principle is the same. It’s a bad look when PGMOL needs a good one – and it is eaten up by conspiracy theorists.
The audio should put paid to suggestions of some sort of corrupt super-plot, where it turns out England has been offered the crown princedom of a yet-to-be-discovered corner of the United Arab Emirates in return for helping Manchester City win the league. It won’t stop some. As John Brewin said on Monday’s Football Weekly, conspiracy theorist is a lifestyle choice these days. If it’s not the mainstream media, it might as well be PGMOL. Without any evidence we should accept just some good old-fashioned incompetence.
It’s unhelpful of Jürgen Klopp to ask for a replay. An unprecedented mistake is still a mistake. He explained it calmly and clearly over four minutes but he knows what the headline will be. Do title-chasing Arsenal need a replay against Brentford last season after the Bees equalised with a goal that should have been ruled out for offside? Fundamentally, I don’t see a tangible difference. Liverpool should have been one up. Arsenal should have stayed one up.
Liverpool have been on the end of quite a few of the big VAR controversies and before people swipe at a lazy and potentially dangerous “typical Liverpool fans” tag, there is a set of fans from every club who would have gone down a rabbit hole with this.
Mistakes happen, which brings us back to VAR and the point of it. There are fewer incorrect decisions – no one goes wild when VAR is good. But there aren’t zero incorrect decisions. There never will be. Lots of calls are about interpretation and humans are fallible.
Bigger than any mistake is the absolute catastrophe of handball since VAR, Real Madrid’s Nacho on Tuesday night in Naples the latest victim of this insanity. When you move, your arms move. Putting them behind your back is potentially the least natural place for them to be when you’re running around. If there’s a compelling reason to ditch VAR, it is this, not the mistakes that will continue to happen. Then there’s the matchgoing fans’ experience – often forgotten in all of this.
We don’t love referees, so our openness to forgive them for erring is far less than it is for players. They MUST be held accountable. People make mistakes for lots of reasons: incompetence, inadequate training, tiredness and pressure. We don’t have a lot of power to affect much of that – but many of us are responsible for the pressure. Officials are constantly harangued by players, by managers, by the crowd – every decision is dissected that afternoon on the radio and TV and then again the following day. Add to that relentless abuse on social media. They would make fewer mistakes if none of that happened. Wishful thinking maybe, but worth trying before the good ones rollerblade out of Stockley Park in search of a quieter life.
