10
votes
Germany's Kai Havertz and Jamal Musiala shrug off storm delay to sink furious Denmark and head through to the UEFA Euro 2024 quarter-finals
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Euro 2024: Germany 2-0 Denmark - Danes fury as belief grows for hosts
- Published
- Jun 29 2024
- Word count
- 390 words
Yet another example of how VAR has killed the thrill and natural flow of the game completely. I’ve hated (yes, literally hated) this technology from it was mentioned the very first time because it was so painfully obvious how much it would affect this much beloved game. The goalposts for
discussions just moved from the referees to behind screens but the arguments remain basically the same. It’s so frustrating how this shit is ruining the fun of the game.
I'm not much of a football fan (the euros and the world cup give me a sufficient "dose" of football every couple years), which may be why I'm more tolerant of it, but I much prefer having VAR double checking goals and penalties (and other things, I suppose). I suppose it helps (me!) that I also enjoy F1, which can have penalties applied for infractions anywhere between pretty much immediately and hours later. I guess I'd rather the rules be enforced than bent and have people "getting away with" barely-there infractions because the referee didn't catch it. I'm thinking of Maradona's "hand of God", an England goal at some recent major competition that bounced well into the goal but, owing to backspin, bounced out and wasn't given... The indignation of suffering a goal that shouldn't have been is worse than the flow being broken, imho.
That England not-given goal was 2010: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5QlBHF6ib8
Shocking, very clearly a goal, it still rankles with me that it wasn't given!
Sure there are bad calls (it's part of the game) but a lot of people act like the rules were always black/white and directly transferable to technology. There's a reason we have a referee and that is to make judgement calls and that's going to piss someone off probably but that's also the beauty of it. With this new direction I honestly think we're heading to a completely referee-less game in 20-30 years because why even bother?
I mean your examples are from 38 and 14 years ago and while there certainly are more recent examples the need for this are still ridiculously overblown IMO.
Take the penalty in this game for example. No one on the pitch, in the stands, in the commentator box batted an eye in that situation and no-one would have said anything if VAR didn’t exist. We would have played on and that would be fine. Is the opposite really what we want for this game? Every single little interaction scrutinized to death and funnily enough your argument that players bent the rules and “got away with it” before is really falling short because VAR is feeding this hyper awareness awarding penalties left and right and affecting the game so much that defending players are on edge whenever the attacking players are in the proximity of the penalty area.
I’d like to add that I acknowledge that the offside and penalty were technically correct but I think we should look at HOW these rules are interpreted and that’s where I think VAR ruins everything.
Ouch, haha :)
I think that's (at least partly) another product of me not being a football fan - I suspect if I watched a million games each week (or however many they play in the premier league/la liga/ligue 1 etc.), I'd have more examples. Hearing your response to me here really convinces me that this is purely a preference based on whether we want a game with objective rules or that "human element", because:
Yes, great!
Yes!!
Excellent, let them be nervy and rattled. Playing under stress often makes for a good show.
People will adapt, just like in F1 (sorry). When the racers are penalised each and every time they push track limits, they stop pushing - they pull their margin of error a little bit tighter, go a 1/100th of a second slower through a corner and avoid a penalty.
I would LOVE to see the VAR picking up people for diving/exaggerating, though, I think that's needed if you're going to clamp down on fouls. Surely it would be possible for a machine to analyse when players are launching themselves in the air from a touch or rolling around like they're possessed after a tap on their shin pad? At the moment, I think I agree that there are too many sanctions, but I think you could deal with some of those by also punishing referee-baiting. If a player looks to be in huge pain, limping, grimacing, the works, and is then running around fine 30s later, retroactively card them. (I know this is unworkable, but let me dream).
Retroactively penalizing dives and 60 min game time with stoppage when the ball is inactive are the only two things that stop me from watching soccer (again). VAR was on my wish list for a very long time and so is the wish to remove ties :D But the latter might never happen (I sometimes brainstorm ideas how a soccer overtime could look like that is feasible to be played during regular weeks in league mode).
But add time stoppage to remove wasting time and that also probably greatly reduces dives already.
Thanks for clearing that up. I can positively say that we are in 100% disagreement and further discussion is futile :)
As someone who casually follows football as well as other sports, I think it's fair to leave room for human error. Not for cheating nor negligence, an honest error.
Now, how we define the line between negligence and error is up for debate and situation dependent.
I hate VAR until I don't hate VAR (when it helps my side). I get the frustration however there have been times when VAR has helped. Can you imagine VAR being around for the 'hand of god' WC goal. I think the VAR process needs to be improved to better go with the flow of the game and I absolutely agree that the current VAR process is taking away from the game.