– It’s illegal!
– I haven’t seen anything so beautiful on the football field for a while!
This is how the narrator mesosed on Puhe’s broadcast Matti Härkönen and expert Timo Furuholm. The two were surprised. So had everyone who saw the stunning goal in the stadium or on television.
A wonderful night of European football at the Töölö football stadium had reached an incredible, well-deserved climax. A winger who is one of HJK’s best players of the season David Browne had fired a dazzling 2-2 equalizing goal from over 30 meters into the net of the big club AS Roma.
Then.
– Yes, now we will go there to check this with VAR.
– In practice, an insignificant fault, completely unaffected by the course of the game, which would never have been noticed or whistled by the human eye. When there is a chance to rewind ten times, it takes on new dimensions.
– I consider it a scandal of some sort.
You can listen below how Härkönen and Furuholm explained first the goal and then the rejection of the goal after the VAR review.
HJK has played a great Eurofall compared to last season, when it was a complete underdog in its Conference League matches against, for example, the Austrian LASK and the Israeli Maccabi Tel Aviv.
Now HJK was able to put in a fight, especially on their home field, against Real Betis, Ludogorets and AS Roma – seasoned European teams. Still, only a draw point against Ludogorets remained. The club is definitely the jumbo of its group, even though there is still an away game against Betis.
CEO of HJK Aki Riihilahti stated that the Club would have several points more than the Europa League without VAR, i.e. video referee. VAR was also unpopular with HJK against Real Betis, when the Spaniards received a penalty after the video review and HJK’s goal was rejected for offside.
Of course, you have to remember that in the Roma match, the Italians also had a goal disallowed for offside after a video review.
HJK did not experience injustice in the Roma game either, if you look at the rule book. HJK striker by Malik Abubakar the hand hit Roman in the corner kick situation By Bryan Cristanten to the face. All goals are checked by VAR, as are all red cards, for example.
If the goal is preceded by a foul, the goal must be rejected.
– The rules are very clear. Sometimes light blows to the face, for example, can lead to such a situation. However, the judges must always act according to the rulebook in their decisions, said AS Roma’s head coach Jose Mourinho after the match.
– Well, one can always think about whether the hand will hit the face or whether the face will be pushed into that hand, stated the HJK pilot Toni Koskela.
There are at least two huge problems with VAR at the moment that affect football.
One of them is especially related to the viewers’ point of view. VAR kills the most beautiful and best feeling in the game of football: celebrating goals.
In Viaplay’s studio, it was stated after the match that nowadays, after a goal is scored, you always have to remember to say “well, it still goes to the VAR screen”.
After the HJK game, it was discussed on Twitter that celebrating a goal should only start when the ball has been kicked back into the game from the center circle. Then the goal can no longer be rejected.
This is football these days.
Another problem is related to the fact that VAR is thought to eradicate filming and falling.
That’s not what it does. To top it all off: if every corner kick was examined by VAR, every corner kick could be awarded a penalty kick or a free kick to the defending team.
Other problems are, for example, that offside situations are watched to the end just to be sure, even if the situation is clear as day. This can lead to unnecessary injuries in collisions between the goalkeeper and the striker, and is extremely frustrating from the spectator’s point of view.
This leads to why Finnish teams need more VAR knowledge and experience. Riihilahti also emphasized that HJK’s players do not yet know how to use VAR. He gave credit to the Italian players for how they know how to put pressure on the referee.
However, Riihilahti needs to be corrected because the players cannot pressure the referee to go to the VAR screen, if everything goes according to the manual. VAR checks are ongoing – the video referee calls the referee to look at the situation on the screen if he feels it is necessary.
There has always been a human element in sports. Contact sports inextricably include fishing for fouls and attempts to appeal to the referee in one way or another. VAR does not mean that fishing will go through less often, even if the most clumsy filming is eliminated.
Nowadays, when a goal is scored, all players inside the penalty area should go down immediately. Yes, there is enough contact in the video to reject a goal.
In Riihilahti’s opinion, football is in a state of transition – will it be humanized or will it go more in the direction of technology? Now we are in the interim phase.
If, and certainly when, messing with VAR continues, the only option would be to clarify its interpretations. The fact that only completely clear and directly related referee errors can be corrected through videos.
It seems that there is still no understanding of this, even though VAR expertise has increased and become clearer over the years. The problem is not with the judges doing their job on the field. Even in the match between HJK and Roma Tiago Martins acted as he was supposed to according to the current regulations. The problem is in the whole system developed for judges.
It’s no wonder that among football fans, the voices of “VAR has ruined football” have grown stronger every year.
For me, VAR could be thrown in the scrap bin. It wouldn’t make football a worse game.
Sport is not fair, with or without VAR. More Hand of God goals please.
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