A lovely game of charades

"Lads I can't use it to check where your Uber is"

Now the dust has settled on the group stages, let’s address some of the things we’ve learned from the World Cup so far. In short, Germany are rubbish so we don’t have to worry about them in tournaments ever again, England are going to win it, four games in one day is NOT too many and no one has been kidnapped, poisoned or otherwise defiled by the Russian state (that we know of). All in all, something of a success.

But, lest we forget, there is an elephant in the room. Most erstwhile pundits and commentators seem to be falling on the side of it being a good thing, and we’re inclined to agree. However, there’s a slight long-term sense of foreboding, which we’re going to greet with minor hysteria, much like we would if there was an elephant AND some pundits in the room, which we’ve just established that there is.

VAR has, in the main, worked brilliantly. There’s something compellingly excellent about the fact that for the most part, mistakes are being eradicated. It’s almost reassuring that after decades of suffering abuse at the hands of either the fans or the press (with the benefit of TV screens and a studio in which to assess split-second decisions), the referee now has a little team of referees who live in a box in Moscow and accompany him everywhere, a bit like the little daemons in His VARk Materials by Philip Pullman.

Ultimately though, VAR is going to be creating more dreadful shithousery than you can shake a stick at. It’s quite amusing to see the level of incredulity with which pundits like Alan Shearer and Pablo Zabaleta have met these initial happenings when reviewing them in games. Shearer in particular genuinely could not BELIEVE that players knowing the referee has the option to review incidents in slow motion had increased the occasions on which they would desperately beseech him to do so. Zabaleta looked so profoundly sad about the gamesmanship he was seeing that you worried he was going to hand in his notice once they were off air and go and write some poetry.

There’s absolutely no reason for them to be remotely surprised. Not to put too fine a point on it, but a lot of the players are – as well as being very good at football – complete and utter con artists, and it’s not like they don’t know how things look on TV. In slow motion. VAR might cut down on grappling at corners, which it has done maybe twice or three times, but it will only increase players looking for, and finding, contact in the box, and making the most of it because the VAR will show that there was contact. Those sorts of things ARE clear and obvious errors to them, unfortunately.

And if you find the whole desperate appeal culture in football a bit unbecoming then you’re not going to like the next couple of weeks much at all – needing to win the World Cup likely brings out the very worst in people, like Ben Affleck in VARmageddon by Bruce Willis. And when games get tight, as they will because ultimately NO ONE is above shite football and eight at the back for long, it’ll quickly become the deciding factor.

The only way to mitigate this on the players’ side is making the ‘VAR sign’ a bookable offence immediately. Or for the player making it to have to stop playing and referee the game for five minutes while the ref follows him around the pitch absolutely bollocking him for every decision he makes. The whole thing is already a horrible new fad, like brandishing the imaginary yellow card, or ‘flossing’, whatever the fuck that is, and there’s something really unedifying about it all. It’s like a shit game of charades. ‘It’s a film?’ ‘No?’ ‘One word?’ ‘What?’ ‘Screen?’ ‘Booking?’ ‘Oh wait – CHEAT’.

On discussing the success of VAR at the World Cup so far, head of Fifa’s referees committee Pierluigi Collina has extolled its virtues, claiming that VAR has seen the 95% of correct decisions made by referees enhanced to 99.3% — not bad for a first effort at a major tournament. Presumably the 0.7% was Tunisian wrestling moves on Harry Kane. However, in perhaps of a sign of things to come, Collina has declared that he sees no need to issue yellow cards for players making a VAR gesture. “The reason to caution is not the gesture itself, more the manner it is made,” he said. So that’s as a lovely grey area for the shithouses to exploit then.

Time will obviously tell. Maybe the players will ultimately fall in line, forget about VAR even being used and just get on with the game safe in the knowledge that stuff will get picked up. Maybe they WON’T see it as a short-cut to penalties every single time the ball goes in the box and maybe corners will be an orderly procession of pairs of players like in that Noah’s VARk book by God. But it feels unlikely, given the never-ending desperation for an advantage. The only guarantee is there’ll still be plenty of subjective moments for us all to disagree on, which really is the only important thing when it comes to football anyway.