Originally Published October 20th 2023 for For Green Fields clients
Certain sections of the mainstream media under the control of rogue entities are waging war on VAR despite the logical disconnect that, even if VAR accidentally confirms some 'errors', it overturns many more and, as such, is a positive force for integrity in a sport that dragged its heels over the implementation of video technology in the first place.
Fortunately, Howard Webb is being proactive on the issue which makes a refreshing change after years of captured inertia under Mike 'Kipper' Riley.
So, following the uproar after a PGMOL decision went against Liverpool, Webb altered PGMOL protocols to ensure similar misunderstandings won't be repeated in future. Furthermore, Webb is pressurising IFAB to allow a revision of an erroneous decision even if play has restarted.
As IFAB is, in effect, an anachronism under the control of British football associations, this change should not be difficult to lever through.
But, in a world where integrity is gamed by nudge and nuance, this steady slicing of a sporting reality is not a permanent solution.
It simply moves the potential issue to a new location.
If, in the Spurs versus Liverpool match, Darren England had had the ability to stop play even after a restart, what happens if Spurs score a goal in that window?
There are further wormholes of chaos ahead.
This situation is entirely of the making of the likes of IFAB and the PGMOL.
If VAR had been activated on behalf of football rather than to the benefit of organised crime and matchfixing, we wouldn't have these inappropriate infrastructures imposing surreal realities on the spectacles at play.
Mark Bullingham, the captured CEO of the Football Association, moves further and suggests that VAR audio links should be made available in real time.
Bizarrely, Bullingham informs us that the marketing and commercial people in football wish for this to happen while the referees are against it.
Now why would that be?
Narcissism seems a constant with match officials from Webb downwards and they never miss a chance to recognise their image on the stadium screens so why would they have any problem with more fame, more public acceptance, more chance to put the record straight, more money after their career has ended etc etc.
FIFA is currently trialing an open mike approach to VAR although after usage in the Club World Cup last February it was decided against utilising the open links for the Women's World Cup with fans not able to hear all the discussions between match officials.
But football needs to be asking itself why it is the only sport that has been unable to suitably integrate VAR into the game while insiders are making colossal profits trading on the lack of integrity at play.
In 1995, Professor Neville Topham, on hearing that I was moving the field of my analytics from horseracing to football, kindly pointed me in a suitable direction: "Monitor the referees".
He provided me with evidences in support of this attitude and we have been monitoring referee-led corruption in football ever since.
If the professor behind the Centre for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming knew that referees were corrupting football nearly three decades ago, one might think that government, media, institutions and other authorities might have caught on in the intervening period.
Dream on.
We live in a kleptocracy.
© 2023 Football is Fixed
