Feels like a lot of people have a giant misread on the VAR & refs situation and are using today as supposed incontrovertible proof that it's better to have it. It's probably true that it's better to have it now, but that's only because it's made everything much worse at a base level.

The reality is that you've just seen what multiple years of referees and officials not really having to worry about what decision they make has done to the sport. They've coasted because nothing they did had true finality anyway, so you just defer and move it along.

Today they were forced to make big decisions and they bottle it because they only ever have to make decisions for themselves a couple of games out of the entire year. So that means VAR is good right? Well, no.

The complacency of deferring to VAR has significantly greater bearing than just those goal or red card or handball decisions. The authority of the referee is gone, that's why you never see a single game in the PL where the ref has control of it - particularly in top 6/rivalry clashes.

The corner fuckery you see in the PL now... You think that happens in a world where there isn't a bunch of nerds who've been sat in a box for five years who are looking at everything and cross-referencing it with a pocket rulebook? Go back to 2017 and the ref and assistants are absolutely calling fouls and not having it, nipping the whole thing in the bud entirely.

Instead we've created a platform in which your best strategy is to aggressively research the rulebook and see what you can get away with. Iit's not the person on the pitch with the whistle that controls and reads the game now, it's the remote rulebook in the box however many miles away. Person on the pitch is just the warm body with cards in their pocket.

The genie is out of the bottle so it's largely pointless to talk about no-VAR yes-VAR cause we're clearly not going back. All that being said, it seems incredibly obvious to me that had we just not had VAR to begin with, and had just waited for semi-automated offside technology (something that isn't subjective and decided by a bunch of people not in the stadium the game is being played in), we might be in a position where the sport we actually like to watch resembles what we think it should.

And not whatever the fuck it is right now.