I definitely agree with the majority here (even though my club doesn’t). My general feeling is that VAR, while leading to a bit higher accuracy in refereeing has come at the cost of several things that make it not worth it:
The controversy, and feeling of being cheated, when wrong decisions are made has multiplied. At least without VAR, you can have a sense of understanding that the ref can’t catch everything. With VAR, it feels much, much worse to be cheated of a penalty, when you know that the ref had access to the same playback as you.
It slows down the game too much. I honestly can’t get over the “waiting period” from when the ball hits the net until a goal is confirmed. Same goes for other situations where you need to wait minutes for a decision in a fast-paced and exiting game. It takes the air out of the game.
It’s still not being used to punish players that habitually simulate or exaggerate to get penalties.
Finally (this might be a controversial opinion): It leads to a lot of “nitpick” decisions by the ref, where a rule was *technically" broken (i.e. player was 1mm offside, or ball slightly grazed a players arm unintentionally), but where the infraction would be impossible to catch without slow-motion, zoomed in, playback. Some people would argue that this is good, because the rules should always be enforced. My opinion is that the most important thing is to enforce the intent behind the rules. For example, the intent behind the offside rule is obvious: It is not to punish players for having a slightly longer nose than their opponent. Similarly, the intent behind the hands-rule is not to punish people for grazing the ball in such a way that nobody but VAR can notice it.
I definitely agree with the majority here (even though my club doesn’t). My general feeling is that VAR, while leading to a bit higher accuracy in refereeing has come at the cost of several things that make it not worth it:
The controversy, and feeling of being cheated, when wrong decisions are made has multiplied. At least without VAR, you can have a sense of understanding that the ref can’t catch everything. With VAR, it feels much, much worse to be cheated of a penalty, when you know that the ref had access to the same playback as you.
It slows down the game too much. I honestly can’t get over the “waiting period” from when the ball hits the net until a goal is confirmed. Same goes for other situations where you need to wait minutes for a decision in a fast-paced and exiting game. It takes the air out of the game.
It’s still not being used to punish players that habitually simulate or exaggerate to get penalties.
Finally (this might be a controversial opinion): It leads to a lot of “nitpick” decisions by the ref, where a rule was *technically" broken (i.e. player was 1mm offside, or ball slightly grazed a players arm unintentionally), but where the infraction would be impossible to catch without slow-motion, zoomed in, playback. Some people would argue that this is good, because the rules should always be enforced. My opinion is that the most important thing is to enforce the intent behind the rules. For example, the intent behind the offside rule is obvious: It is not to punish players for having a slightly longer nose than their opponent. Similarly, the intent behind the hands-rule is not to punish people for grazing the ball in such a way that nobody but VAR can notice it.
That’s my 2 øre.