The Political Economy of Football V2

Henry Mance of the FT provides a balanced assessment of the debate about VAR.  For me, it confirms that most fans are conservative technophobes at heart.  Back in the 1950s many of them opposed the introduction of floodlights. It does need tweaking and Mance has some useful suggestions. Moreover, if the VAR team can't reach a decision in three minutes, the on field decision should stand.   But so much is at stake financially in modern football that mistakes by officials can't simply be shrugged off. Here’s some good news about the world in 2026: football refereeing is more accurate than ever. If you don’t believe me, look at the English Premier League’s list of recent wrong decisions. Most of the mistakes are marginal. Thanks to technology, glaring errors are now even rarer than successful Manchester United signings. It is basically impossible that England will be knocked out of this year’s World Cup by an equivalent of Diego Maradona’s 1986 Hand of God (they will ...

The problem with the award of penalties is that a lot of them are marginal decisions, even with VAR.   This is particularly the case with the handball rule which has arguably been applied a little less stringently as the season has gone on, and probably rightly so. Analysis by the Match of the Day team last night suggested that two of Forest’s penalty claims at Everton were not justified, but the third one was.    The referee should have been at least summoned to the screen to review his decision. It is easy to be critical of Nottingham Forest. And the manner in which they used social media to voice allegations over the integrity of match officials after Sunday’s 2-0 away loss against fellow relegation candidates Everton was arguably undermining the foundations of the game.    Officials make mistakes, sometimes bad ones, but they may not qualify as clear and obvious errors and they indicate poor decision-making rather than bias. Yet whi...

The release of the audio exchanges between officials at Saturday's game between Spurs and Liverpool has fanned the flames of the controversy about the offside decision.   They reveal an unacceptable level of incompetence and casual decision-making. Dan Chapman, partner and head of sport and employment at Leathes Prior, said it was difficult to see what legal claims Liverpool had.   He told  The Athletic : “What Liverpool are probably going to do, perhaps with the support of most clubs, is say, ‘This is no longer acceptable’ and, ‘There needs to be radical changes’. I can’t realistically see there is a legal route. But you don’t need a strong case sometimes, you need an arguable case and then you use it to bring about change. “I can’t see any circumstances where it’s going to result in any changes being made to the fixture because you can’t demonstrate that the game would have been different had that goal counted.” Hannah Kent, a senior associate in the dispute re...

With all the controversy over VAR, there is surely room for Fan Assisted Refereeing (FAR) and it is now been tried out on an experimental basis, admittedly in a two team league: First test for new technology

Football's biggest competitions are exploring the sponsorship opportunities created by the introduction of video assisted referee technology (VAR). Fifa for the World Cup and La Liga in Spain are among those interested. It has been estimated that VAR was on screen for 27 minutes during last year's World Cup. This is significant airtime given advertising during the finals of a big tournament can cost up to £600,000 a minute. Independent sports marketing analyst Tim Crow told the Financial Times, 'I think it is the biggest sponsorship asset that football has ever created. Most other advertising is on the side but VAR is in the middle of a game, part of a game. For a sponsor that is a dream come true.' Fans are divided about VAR. Many think that it takes away the controversy away from a game and that even when examined in detail decisions such as handball are often not clear cut. Others argue that it prevents mistakes such as denying a penalty which could change t...