Special Feature
They think it’s all oVAR... The beautiful game is changing beyond recognition, with lessons for closer to home Norman Chambers Managing Director NACFB
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s the pubs start to fill and huddles begin to form around long-since dormant office water coolers, you can guarantee it will not be too long before the universally divisive issue of football’s VAR returns. A colleague of mine was recently bemoaning the impact VAR is having on the game and I realised that there were learnings from its failings that directly apply to our own sector. Indulge me for one moment...
Don’t mention the VAR Following a trial of video assisted referees (VAR) at the 2018 World Cup, the English Football Association (FA) deemed the technological advances both practical and suitable enough to implement more widely across their flagship Premier League. Supporters were promised faster and more accurate decisions and an implementation that would aid, not undermine, the on-field referee. All whilst providing for an overall better fan experience. Gone would be the frustratingly glaring errors, gone would be the agonisingly unjust decisions, gone also would be the wider confusion. This ‘silVAR bullet’ was set to revolutionise the game as we knew it.
