Video Assistant Referee was introduced in world of football to cut down the errors caused by error in human judgement. Football is probably the last major global sports to finally make use of technology in assisting the referees. Cricket, Field Hockey, Rugby, Tennis etc have been using technology for the assistance of referees in one way or another for quite some time now. FIFA World Cup in Russia held back in 2019 was one of first major event to make use of VAR technology and it caused a fair share of controversy and sparked much debate for itself. Subsequently, Leagues across Europe introduced VAR to increase the quality of decision making in their games. One of these leagues was England’s top tier, the Premier League.
So far, VAR has caused much more controversy in Premier League than it has managed to avoid. A controversial decision by VAR on each match day manages to make its way to the news. Many experts, coaches and players have expressed the loss of their confidence in VAR due to these controversial decisions. Quique Sánchez Flores, who coaches Watford in the Premier League, is amongst these peoples.
Quique’s team managed to draw 1-1 against Tottenham few weeks ago in a game where two major decisions went against them due to VAR.
“I thought VAR was something objective, but I’m starting to think it’s very subjective, I think it’s a lack of Kane in Kabasele, he pushed it with his hands, I think we let’s lose something, it’s very odd, you think VAR is helping football, but that’s not the case,” Sánchez Flores said in a press conference.
Watford are at the bottom of the Premier League table with 8 points after match day 14 as they have only managed to win game so far in their 2019-20 campaign and decisions like these only take things from bad to worse for them.
