VAR came to the world of soccer with its cool technology as Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the warm Commandments written on two stone tablets. I am the VAR, your god, and you will not have other other gods in front of me. You will not take the VAR name in vain. And so. But the tables of the VAR are not as clear as the tables of the law, and the soccer people begin to long for the old days in which the golden calf of arbitration humanity was worshiped to understand the incomprehensible. What has the VAR brought us? Penalties that, like Schrödinger’s cat, are simultaneously dead and alive, are and are not, can be whistled or not, are indisputable and highly disputed. Offsides that invalidate a play because the forward’s left elbow was one millimeter in front of the big toe of the defender’s right foot. Red cards that appear like rabbits in a magician’s hat because from God’s point of view any entry can deserve a red card. The VAR was going to bring peace to football. What a scam.
In the Forum of Rome there was a temple dedicated to the god Janus that only closed its doors in times of peace. The historian Suetonius tells that with the end of the civil wars and the victory over Cantabrians and Asturians, the Emperor Augustus went to the temple of Janus and closed its doors, which had been open for years, and with that powerful ceremony he began what was called “Pax Augusta.” Roman peace. The end of wars. Stability and prosperity. With the arrival of the VAR, the soccer emperors closed the doors of the temple of Janus because the civil wars stopped making sense and the last strongholds of soccer romanticism had been crushed. Peace of the VAR. The end of the wars caused by “debatable” penalties, forwards “in line” that invalidated an offside and red cards that remained yellow because the referee’s eye, unlike the eye of God, cannot see everything.
Roman peace? Let them tell the Villarreal footballers when they see that a hand from Piqué inside the area is not a hand. The end of wars? Let them tell the fans who have stopped celebrating the goals of their teams until the men in black of the VAR verify that the elbow was not a millimeter in front of the knee. Stability? Let them tell the footballers who have to get used to their intentions being measured movement by movement. Prosperity? Let football be told when Skynet leads the army of machines and football tailored to man is just a memory from a very distant past.
The blissful VAR, the anti-proletarian glamor of so many footballers, the extravagantly millionaire transfers and salaries, the stadiums with the strangest names, the jerseys with incomprehensible advertising, the attempt to build ugly new ceremonies that recover the aura of football, the soulless steamroller The Champions League and other horrors have paradoxically turned football into a grandiose spectacle as impressive as the Roman Empire, which in the days of Emperor Trajan had one foot in the Atlantic Ocean and another foot in the Tigris River. But the splendor of modern football, like the spectacular sunsets in William Turner’s paintings, is the result of particles that fill the atmosphere and reflect sunlight. The eruption of the Tambora volcano in 1815 caused a year without a summer and an atmosphere that favored the scattering of light. The eruption of paid soccer, television rights, capricious mega-rich and states with money to squander by the handful are causing soccer without a summer and an atmosphere that favors the dispersion of soccer light. The eruptions explain Turner’s sunsets and the hypnotic glow of soccer. The VAR is not the instrument of the Roman Pax or a beautiful sunset in a match without arbitration errors or disputes between fans. The doors of the temple of Janus are closed, but the VAR is open. What a scam, friend Augusto.
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