Relentless VAR ‘concern’ in Everton v Spurs proves why it has ‘tainted’ football
When VAR was announced, many supporters jumped for joy at the potential correction of their game, Everton fans included.
After all, having been on the end of so many farcical refereeing decisions over the years, it was believed that this technology would right those wrongs.
One outstanding example is Duncan Ferguson’s 2005 header against Villarreal, which was bizarrely ruled out by Pierluigi Collina. VAR would have overruled that.
Or so we thought.
If anything, this new invention has clouded the game’s rules more than ever, and now the Premier League is riddled with hilariously bad refereeing and even more incompetence some distance away in Stockley Park.
Everton FC v Tottenham Hotspur – Premier League
Lines are drawn and t-shirt lines examined, all in the name of a fair decision that never comes.
Saturday’s clash with Tottenham Hotspur detailed devastatingly the effect that VAR has had on Evertonians.
How did VAR affect Everton’s game vs Spurs?
Writing for the Liverpool ECHO, journalist Matt Jones sought to give his view on how such technology has taken away from the spirit of the game.
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No longer can fans uncontrollably celebrate goals, as there is always the looming fear of a transgression to be reviewed.
Jarrad Branthwaite’s late winner was no different, when a cloud was briefly cast over Goodison Park as the purple Premier League logo flashed up on the screen.
Fortunately, it read ‘goal given’, but it certainly muted the jubilation temporarily.
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Photo by PAUL ELLIS/AFP via Getty Images
Jones succinctly detailed this: ‘The reality was a little different, for this correspondent at least. With Jack Harrison and Jarrad Branthwaite bundling their efforts over the line for Everton with bodies strewn on the ground elsewhere, there was immediately an instinctive concern about VAR that punctured that rush of joy when your team scores.’
He then writes: ‘That shared experience of a goal is what we all crave when stepping through the turnstiles, right? It was the best best thing about football. It used to be sacred. Now it is tainted.’
VAR has diluted the game
Jones’s description of events perfectly encapsulates everything that is wrong with the device brought in to supposedly save the game from disrepute.
It marks a perfect microcosm for the modern game’s disloyalty to the working, match-going fan, who has seen football ripped from their grasp and sold to the masses.
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Photo by PAUL ELLIS/AFP via Getty Images
Long gone are the days when the clubs belonged to the fans, and now rich investors from America, China and Saudi Arabia dominate the English football pyramid and beyond, with no care for what came before.
VAR’s existence, to kill the atmosphere around the grounds and maintain control that they never had, is a terrifying personification of everything that is wrong with today’s game.
