Updated:
save
Accustomed to being the punching bag, the umpires for once teach a rebellious soul. With a point of naivety and in a voice that is not very loud, they also complain and protest, like all football players. The judges move from pedagogy and good words to a more demanding or belligerent tone. They demand respect for the various football families and criticize the excessive noise that exists around the league, its decisions, the controversies that the VAR generates. Nothing new under the sun. Eternal dream of conquest of the collegiate, that with VAR or without VAR, they have never achieved. The bad guy is always one of them, not the footballer who fails or the leader who behaves like a hooligan. This was said by the arbitration representatives in the presentation of the season balance of the VAR. «They have developed their work in a climate of tension and criticism far above reality ”, analyzed its president Carlos Velasco Carballo. According to the establishment, video arbitration is less and less wrong. He was 97 percent correct on penalties and 96 percent offside.
The meetings around the VAR called by the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) originally had a formative meaning. Education and didactics for journalists, clubs and any other protagonist of the king sport. It was the dawn of 2017 and there was an incipient format called to change the dynamics of soccer matches. The VAR was consolidated as a definitive tool in the 2018 World Cup in Russia and the meetings with the CTA were then about the particularities in the application of video arbitration.
2020 is coming and somehow umpires come to become one more part of the system that feeds football. “There is a lot of noise, criticism, controversy, statements … And this highlights the lack of knowledge of the rules of the game,” said Velasco Carballo.
The referees, then, go on the attack. For so long, silent, voiceless and faceless, they have lost presence in the chicken coop that usually accompanies each end of the day, or the matches of Barça or Madrid. To Velasco Carballo, educated, respectable, bilingual guy, one of the international parents of the VAR, it almost cost him cold sweats to have to resort to censorship and wailing to defend his associates. «I, as president, do not allow the knowledge of our arbitrators to be doubted. Out of 825 plays we’ve had we can discuss about 15 or 30. Let’s be ambitious but rigorous in criticism and honest to recognize the benefits. The VAR helps football and doubting that it helps is not wanting to see a reality, “he said.
The social reality of soccer is that before the referees were reviled and now the same is done as the VAR system. No change in model of conduct in soccer players.
«Fewer mistakes than ever»
The former international referee used the data as a source of argument to say that “this season there have been fewer refereeing errors than ever. The VAR has made some mistakes, which everyone has seen and there is no problem to recognize. But if there are more hits now, Why is there more controversy?».
In the 380 matches played in the First Division, the VAR intervened 156 times. The collegiate experienced 825 incidents within the area that, according to their own studies, resulted in 91.27% success, while they were wrong in 8.73%. The VAR action settled 51 controversial actions.
The positive effect of VAR in soccer is evident. There are no more offside goals, there are no legal goals, there are no goals with the hand, Simulations go down, there is less violent behavior behind the referee’s back … “If we don’t blame a player for missing a clear chance, why do we blame the referees by accepting that we were all wrong?”
.
