Just because in the history of football there have been a plenty of doubtful situations, the headbord have decided to introduce a VAR rule. The video technology “VAR” made its great debut on the World Cup 2018. As it resulted useful in many occasions, they did not wait much until they intoroduced its usage in the Champions League as well.
The VAR system is made in order to help the refferees out in the decissions. Offsides, fouls and goals can easily be rechecked thanks to this technology. However, this very system have suffered a lots of critics recently. The latest one is the canceled Sterling’s goal in the Champions League match between Tottenham and Manchester City. His team was losing 4:3 which goal would have led Man City to the semi finals of the competition. According to VAR system, there was an offside situation just before he scores. Tottenham is the team that made it to the semi finals because of the first leg match win with a score 1:0.
However, some of the most contraversal situations that left the public with doubts just because of the lack of VAR revision are the following:
Chelsea – Barcelona (1:1) 2009
It was such a bad night for the Norwegian refferee Ovrebo. What do we start with? The match played in Spain finished with no winner. Not even a single goal was scored. On the second leg match played at Stamford Bridge, Barcelona was the first team to score. It was such a shameful night for the refferee. The Chelsea players would ask for three penalties in contraversal situatuions on which the Norwegian would say “NO”. The fans became even more furious when Barcelona yet managed to score a goal by the end of the match. This led to win after which Barcelona even became the Champions League winner.
Barcelona – Milan (3:1) 2012
Yet another situation in which Barcelona was the center of the attention. The majority of the public had the impression that the Spanish team is the favourite team of the refferees. The first leg of the match finished without goals. The first half of the second leg match finished with one goal on each side. Later on, the Dutch refferee showed on the white spot, a decission somewhat suspicious. The penalty was realized by Messi, which only opened Barcelona’s door to the win.
Real Madrid – Bayern (4:2) 2017
Cristiano Ronaldo made a hat trick on that very match while his team managed to win in the additional time.. The problem rises when Ronaldo scores twice from irregular position. To be more precise, two out of his three goals were scored from offside position. No VAR no justice. This only sirved as an additional “salt to the wound” for the Bayern fans. Firstly the refferee Victor Kashai gave a red card to Arturo Vidal, something the fans considered as injustice. That very season Real Madrid even won the Champions League title.
Therefore, the invention of the VAR system could save a lots of injustice on the football scene. Even thought it is something new, its use resulted as something crucial. Lets hope its useage will spread around all over the world and make the football mush more interesting sport to follow.
