The Premier League Has Its First VAR Disaster Of The Season

The Video Assistant Referee is supposed to get everything right. This is an incredibly high standard to hold any sort of officiating, but this is VAR’s main selling point and raison d’être. All of the delays, ticky-tack calls, and general disruption to the flow of a soccer match are supposed to be worth it; after all, who doesn’t want the correct call made when an incorrect call could decide a match, a season, a legacy? But of course, VAR is not perfect, and it will never be perfect, even when called to rule on supposedly cut-and-dry offside decisions. As soon as any sort of subjectivity is thrown into the mix, VAR is no better than a normal ref, and oftentimes worse. With that in mind, I submit into evidence Erling Haaland’s 60th minute goal during Sunday’s Manchester derby.

At first glance, this is exactly the type of goal decision that VAR should excel at sorting through. Haaland’s back-post finish was ruled out on the field by the sideline referee for an offside, as he judged that Haaland was ahead of both the ball and the last defender when Josko Gvardiol struck the ball across. Since it was, even in live action, a very close decision, a VAR review was all but assured, and said review found that Haaland was actually onside at the time of Gvardiol’s pass. The camera angle showed on replays didn’t make that clear, but the lines as deployed by the VAR, which are more accurate than the TV cameras, did help decide that the Norwegian was just onside. Great, goal given.