Well, it didn’t take long.
Ecuador won a free kick from just outside the half-time less than two minutes into Sunday’s World Cup opener between Ecuador and hosts Qatar. Their left-back threw a dangerous ball towards goal, the Qatar keeper charged past his defense to knock it into the air, and an Ecuadorian centre-back jumped up to challenge with his head. From there, chaos ensued: Several players collided; the ball went straight into the air. Trapped in no man’s land, the keeper swung it and missed. The centre-back then rose into the air and executed a flying-like roundabout kick, directing the ball towards Ecuador’s all-time leading scorer, Enner Valencia, who was waiting to score the nod.
awesome! The Ecuador fans section exploded. The players knelt in a circle, raised their heads to the sky, and thanked God. The game is really on! ……this is not the truth.
If you’re a football fan, you know what’s coming, although you probably hope it doesn’t come so soon. It turns out that Target is actually under review. for what? No one knows yet. All TV viewers saw the inscrutable face of the referee as he took instructions from his assistants in the replay room. After the celebrations, the TV broadcast replayed the goals from four different angles, the commentators analyzed the entire sequence and the referee ruled out goals that were clearly offside. No coo coo.
That didn’t make the fans happy.ecuadorians present rubbing each other’s fingers In the “pay me” gesture, it seemed to suggest that the Qatari had bribed the referee.online, blame corruption flew away remain and correct. Conspirator Had a great day.some people simply express confusion About the phone, or not believe it.other pointed out, the ruling is technically the correct decision, to put it bluntly. But in a broader, more meaningful sense, that’s not the case. If anything, all of the problems with VAR, the relatively new and still controversial instant replay system in football, are on display. The sport has neglected refereeing and what the sport is all about.
Soccer is a latecomer to video censorship compared to major U.S. sports. The NFL adopted it back in 1986, the NBA in the early 2000s, and the MLB followed suit a few years later. When football finally got video censorship in 2018, it was done in the worst, clumsiest way possible. Decisions are made over eons and are not as precise as they pretend. Fans have zero transparency into what’s going on. In the days before VAR, long-standing rules seemed simple enough, but took on quantum-mechanical-level complexity when examined frame-by-frame. Every week brings new anger.
The past four years have ironed out some of the earlier problems. Offside calls are now ultra-accurate and semi-automated. VAR does do some good things: it eliminates the worst refereeing errors and ensures we don’t see another god-level abomination in which a particularly egregious foul somehow goes undetected and changes the course of the game . Even so, you’d be hard-pressed to find a fan who thinks VAR is as good as it is. The Ecuador-Qatar decision is a clear example. In the narrowest, most annoying sense, it was the right decision.To the naked eye, and even to those watching the TV reruns, the violation is almost invisible in chaos. But VAR spot it.
Congratulations, officials – you did it right. But for what? Sports are entertainment at the end of the day, and referees must always strike a balance between accuracy and viewability. If the former were our sole and final focus, we’d put every potential violation under the microscope…and the game would be completely unwatchable.Officially Censored Dramas – They should Censorship – yes those calls, if allowed to hold, look really unfair. No one (except perhaps the opposing team’s fans) likes to see a seemingly legitimate goal disallowed. He and his team-mates didn’t delay in celebrating when Valencia headed home. The Qatari players did not turn to the referee in protest. Fans lost their minds without hesitation. Not even the commentators seemed to consider the possibility that the goal might not be achieved, and so neither did the TV audience. No one asked for this. If the game goes ahead, no one will think twice.
VAR is only useful if it makes football better for fans. It can only do this if it can remind them that checks are in progress fast enough and returns fast enough that they don’t fail to celebrate the goal for fear of a reversal. It should only exclude those targets, and when you look back at the playback, one might reasonably think that, yes it is offside. By eliminating “toenail offside’ You can even give the attacker a buffer zone of a foot or two.
To FIFA’s credit, new computerized visualization techniques have been introduced to help demonstrate and explain VAR’s Delphi decisions, a strategy that works so well with tennis’ eagle-eyed decision-making techniques that fans and players alike love it and have nothing to lose. This technique was accepted without complaint. Visualization is certainly a step forward. But VAR is no eagle eye. For one thing, Hawkeye has been almost instantaneous; so far in this competition, VAR visualizations have arrived within 10 minutes of the fact. Perhaps more importantly, offside to offside not football or something in and out It’s tennis. When a sweet forehand hits the baseline, the first thing you think of is, But is it there? That said, inevitably, tennis is about: in or out.Football fans don’t spend 90 minutes thinking On or off? There are a million other variables to worry about. That’s part of the fun and complexity of football. This is how it should be.
Less than 15 minutes after his opener was ruled out, Valencia scored again before doubling Ecuador’s advantage 15 minutes later. The game ended 2-0. It will almost certainly be just the first of many VAR controversies around the 2022 World Cup. (anyone seeing first half Or that Argentina game? ) If you think this game is complicated or ambiguous, please wait until we get a VAR decision that depends on the referee’s interpretation of the ‘stage of play’. Fortunately, Sunday’s decision ultimately became irrelevant. The next one might not be.