Football / Soccer / Calcio / Futebol / Fußball

Will PGMOL apologize to Chelsea ? No fucking chance.

Any self respecting football fan can obviously see this is not a penalty.

Barely any contact

you telling me the force of Cucurellas arm really affected HAALAND that much, yeah fuckin right

I thought the Haaland pen they got right. Both players hold onto each other as seen in the photo (could give either way but unfair on the other) but the key incident is Haaland beats Cucurella and is held back. That’s the decision imo.

In other sports, such as American Football, I think the idea of "clear and obvious error" or "indisputable evidence" as it's called there makes sense and often works out. I'm not really sure it makes sense in football. So many things like red card offenses or fouls in the box are too subjective, and refs can just hide behind "clear and obvious errors" because there isn't always a very set rules on what constitutes a foul. I think removing the "clear and obvious error" would hopefully make VAR a bit better

Obviously I'm not happy that Sheffield United didn't concede a penalty for handball because we would likely have won the game comfortably if we'd gone 2-0 up, but ultimately I am because that kind of incident shouldn't given. His arm is barely out.

In theory, the "clear and obvious" condition actually works toward the ideal version of VAR, because it should infinitely speed up the VAR decision-making process. The problem is that referees are afraid to make the same calls they used to make when VAR didn't exist, because the easier thing is to just let VAR do the refereeing instead.

In fact, I was initially under the impression that this "clear and obvious" condition also applied to offsides, given that we previously had the "benefit of doubt to attacker" condition. But once the lines started coming out, the concept of "benefit of doubt" seems to have disappeared.

I'd like to see VAR be implemented in a way whereby all they do is literally take a second look at the incident with the benefit of multiple angles and come to a decision quickly. Not five minutes of looking at ten replays of a slow-mo to decide if a ball touched a hand or some minimal contact was made. If VAR cannot come to a conclusion within a reasonable time, we go with the on-field decision. We could even apply this to the centimetre offside calls.

For this to happen, refs must be able to do their job without the crutch of VAR because their decisions matter. Meanwhile, fans must be okay with the odd mistake happening - which is honestly already an improvement over pre-VAR era. For instance, nobody really complained about centimetre offside calls before VAR because we accepted the "benefit of doubt to attacker" condition.

At the end of the day, VAR exists to assist the referee. Not to do the job of the actual officials on the pitch.

Endo tackle in any other league is not a foul, by Prem standards it’s a red all day

This was a 50-50 challenge, with both Endo and Nørgaard going into it in a similar way to win the ball.

They are absolutely not going into it in a similar way. Who the fuck is reviewing this shit. Why do they act like we don’t have eyes. One player goes in from the front the other from the side. No shit it’s the one who goes in from the side that gets hurt. It’s not a coincidence. That’s the whole reason it’s dangerous to go in from the front.

I’m not even debating if it’s a red or not, but why are ESPN even doing these VAR reviews if they can’t be objective. You have to either never played football or be blind to think that they go into the tackle in a similar way.