SOME of you may think that the following is based on my bitterness as a Scotland supporter, and the simmering rage still bubbling away inside of me over Scott McTominay’s disallowed goal against Spain on Thursday night.
To paraphrase Niles Crane, as a journalist and beacon of impartiality it is an accusation I find crude, offensive, and impossible to deny.
I have though, on this issue at least, been consistent. Around this time last year, I wrote a column calling VAR an ‘annoying appendage to the game’ that was ‘unworthy of the joy it sucks out of football’, and 12 months on the point stands. If anything, it has gotten worse.
It isn’t even so much the decision to disallow the McTominay goal that still rankles. By the tiniest of margins, it appears that Jack Hendry was indeed offside. But it is the way that VAR was used to hunt for the merest infraction – any infraction - to disallow a goal that a Spanish goalkeeper wasn’t saving supposing prime Iker Casillas and Victor Valdes joined Unai Simon between the sticks. Simon didn’t even try.
Worse still, is that referee Serdar Gözübüyük signalled for a foul by Hendry on Simon when he initially chalked off the goal, a call that was also confirmed on the screens in the stadium.
When it became apparent that such a decision was ludicrous, and it certainly couldn’t be said that the officials had missed a clear and obvious foul in real time, UEFA then relayed the information that the call was actually offside well after the fact. Or in short, they were covering their backsides.
And this is another issue with VAR. Why on earth in an entertainment industry are we poring over slow motion replays to rob supporters of such moments of unbridled joy as McTominay’s goal would normally have been?
If anything, every goal is now greeted with scenes of ‘bridled joy’ - if that is such a thing - with fans anxiously waiting for Big Brother to rain on their parade because someone’s big toenail was marginally ahead of a defender’s armpit.
Even if Hendry was offside, was he interfering with play? I will never be convinced that his positioning or proximity to Simon had any bearing whatsoever on the ball finding the top corner of the net. So, having studied the frame-by-frame footage, UEFA can bleat on all they like about the decision being technically ‘correct’, but in no way was justice served.
I had absolutely had it with VAR long before Thursday night, so it has been comforting to see so many previous advocates of the technology admit during the week that its implementation has been a disaster, and that they would now rather it was consigned to the dustbin of football history.
Though, seeing Scots going full circle on the issue also rather brings to mind the famous tweet: 'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.’
No matter, we welcome all from the dark side who have now seen the light when it comes to VAR. The depressing fact though is that the authorities – both foreign and domestic - are never likely to cross that divide.
The McTominay ‘goal’ has been and gone. Scotland lost the game, but we will still qualify for the European Championships (we will, trust me…), and we will all just have to move on.
What would make that easier though is to have some closure, so an explanation from UEFA on what the goal was actually ruled out for and how the officials arrived at such a conclusion would be welcome.
I contacted them to ask for just that, as well as enquiring as to whether the audio of the conversation between the on-field officials and the VAR team will be made available, as PGMOL deemed fit to do following the controversial offside decision in the recent match between Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool.
The response was a single line: 'The goal was ruled out for offside.' At the time of publication, a request to answer the points raised remains unanswered. As so many things do until we have more transparency.
Nobody is out to get at refs here. Everyone makes mistakes. But by keeping things behind closed doors, officials leave themselves open to allegations of incompetence, or worse.
It soon emerged that referee Gözübüyük had been named in an investigation into match-fixing some years ago, hardly helping quell the suspicions of those Scotland fans who were fast considering swapping their Glengarries for tin-foil hats.
I am not suggesting anything so malevolent or that such jiggery-pokery has been afoot. But an explanation of the shambolic process by which the officials arrived at their conclusion, and why they then altered that conclusion, is the least that Scotland deserve.
Had it not been for VAR, nary an eyelid would have been batted. The Spanish didn’t feel as though they had been cheated. We could all have just got on with the game, and the Tartan Army could have got on with life with the precious memory of McTominay’s brilliant finish filed away alongside Archie Gemmill leading the Dutch a merry dance and Faddy in Paris.
Oh well, at least they got to the ‘correct’ decision in the end, eh? Or, at the very least, one they could justify.
