When I was in New York last year to cover the US Open, a fellow journalist asked one of those questions that has the rare power of forcing the subject to genuinely consider a topic for the first time.
If we had today’s technology, he asked the visiting pro at a round-table discussion, would the mythology around John McEnroe be as strong?
He was referring, of course, to McEnroe’s infamous “chalk flew up” outburst, and the American’s repeated têtes-à-tête with umpires over marginal calls. With hawk-eye producing definitive answers, we wondered, would such aggressive reactions become farcical to the point of impossibility.
It is an argument that resonates this month, with the impending use of Video Assistant Referees at the Confederations Cup in Russia – the first time VAR technology will feature in a senior men’s international football tournament.
Will the range of arguments against such progress, be they centred around delaying the flow of the game or denying us pub arguments, hold out when we’re given a chance to see the technology in action? Or will the difference be far from what we anticipated.
Zambia U20s were awarded a pen & Italy's no.14 was sent off for this on Monday🙈
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The Confederations Cup might mark the first time the eyes of the world will find themselves focused on video technology in football, but there have been some other examples already.
The controversial call in this week’s France v England friendly, suggest work may still be required. But the flaws remain in the human interpretation side of things, rather than the technology itself.
The line between mere resistance to change and genuine concerns for the pattern of the game is a fine one, and it is difficult to go against the judgement of those who have to deal with the changes on a daily basis.
One should acknowledge that football’s use of VARs may still rely on judgement calls, albeit judgement calls with the benefit of alternate angles and with more information than is seen in the split-second decision-making processes usually afforded tor referees. But at the same time, even those sports where technology is used to rule on black or white decisions has been met with some opposition.
"In a way, it's good because you're not going to lose over a bad call,” tennis player Mardy Fish said in 2006 after becoming the first man to challenge a call at a Grand Slam in the Hawk-Eye era, during the US Open of that year.
However, as the Washington Post reported at the time, we saw some of the arguments against the technology which we continue to encounter today where football is concerned. Most notably, the idea that it slows down the game, and that bad calls are part of competitive sport.
While the latter may be true looking backwards, there is no obvious reason to continue along an imperfect path besides ‘it’s always been this way’. And the suggestion that correct calls will give people less to talk about is surely a flaw in our imaginations, rather than being an argument against getting things right.
There is slightly more debate when it comes to the idea of slowing down the game. Football has long resisted a rugby-style timekeeping system, ostensibly in an effort to hit the ill-defined target of ‘letting the game flow’, and while this leaves the ball out of play for chunks of the 90-minute duration of a match it also influences the tactical makeup of a game.
Coaches will make substitutions to wind down the clock or to disturb opponents’ momentum, making for extended periods of little or no ‘action’, whatever that means. Similarly, a goalkeeper may dwell on the ball to slow things down or waste time after making a save, often with no repercussions. Yet a couple of seconds for a video replay, something which carries a greater level of stage-management in name only, still holds something akin to boogeyman status.
Part of it comes down to a fear of change, especially when such a change is seen as being imposed on a sport or a league without its consent. Back in 2002, when the Premier League was required to fall in line with a broader transfer window system, opposition was so great that there was discussion of a legal challenge to the new regime. Yet now, a decade and a half on, the transfer window is so ingrained that it has become the norm, even shaping content calendars in the football media to some degree.
It might take a while to get accustomed to the breaks in play that come with the easing in of VARs, but those watching at home are unlikely to be hugely affected. Indeed, one would anticipate the time taken to challenge a call taking an equivalent amount of time to a broadcaster showing a replay, after which the ball has generally been back in play for only a second or two. If anything, viewers at home miss less action if video replays are incorporated into the running of the game.
Football has introduced plenty of new rules and regulations, some of which have lasted longer than others. Some 15 years have passed since the Golden Goal rule was scrapped, while the Silver Goal was even more short-lived.
However, while many of these rules were introduced in the name of attacking and/or free-flowing football – the Away Goals Rule and the Backpass Rule being prime examples – there is a difference between this and laws introduced with improved accuracy as their sole objective.
Opposition on the nebulous grounds of ‘flow of the game’ might be sincere, but questions remain over whether the arguments against are solid enough to counter those in favour of fairer decisions. If anything, suggestions that one rule change could lead to another are largely unfounded, with the ‘failure’ of Golden and Silver Goal rules demonstrating that governing bodies are prepared to abandon rule changes which don’t have their desired effect.
We may well find ourselves looking back in a decade and a half, with Video Assistant Referees as natural an element of the game as transfer windows, and wonder what all the fuss was about.
