Laws of the Game

I wanted to touch on this while it's (once again) a hot topic. As someone who's played, coached, refereed, and now analyzed/scouted the sport, I'm qualified to talk about the laws of the game. I'll outline the overall problem with the constant rule changes, explain why hand ball and offside are complex issues, and finally give my thoughts on VAR and where the game's going.

With hand ball, and offside for that matter, the original intention is not being carried out with the laws. The original intent was to stop cheating, which as a ref is the second thing you're meant to focus on, the first being the safety of the players. An example of obvious cheating is Luis Suarez against Ghana in the World Cup. He was correctly punished for it, but that's what the law is meant to do. The mutation that is the current law ignores intent. I'm an avid Serie A watcher, and it's been the case there for two or three seasons now that the law is crooked.

The VAR thing relates to one or two other pieces I've put out about "modern football". I was listening to a West Brom podcast (insert name of it here) and the guys were talking about this very topic. Basically, they were saying, and this is not necessarily new or insightful opinion, that the constant rule changes are meant for "nerds" and the people watching games on TV. The idea here, and I totally agree, is that match-going fans don't matter to the clubs and governing bodies, and they're once again being taken for granted. I'm glad the podcasters spoke on this because I'm not the only one noticing. In fact, I'd wager that many "real football fans", AKA those that actually go to matches, have the same thoughts. I know first hand the shenanigans that go on with video replay in sport, as it's been in American sports for many years. Baseball, being my original sport, is a good example. The rules haven't really changed, aside from this asterisk season that is 2020, in a long time. That said, the replay is only used for certain things. This same issue applies to VAR, as it's not used for things like diving outside the box, yellow cards, throw ins/corners/goal kicks, etc. But going back to baseball, they still have human umpires regularly blowing ball/strike calls, which is unacceptable at this point. I saw a YouTube video from the baseball subreddit highlighting the most egregious missed calls; pitches literally over the middle of the plate called balls. As I said, the technology is there to make the right calls on black v white decisions, yet it isn't used, and what they do use it for often comes down to subjective views.

Late edit:

Had this in drafts over the poorly-timed international break and two more examples that irritated me played out. Actually, one relates directly to the United-Spurs one right before the break, but the other was from the Milan derby. So, the first combines red cards and offside calls, and it was the van Dijk injury. I actually woke up after this happened, so I saw the aftermath when the Dutchman was hobbling off with the physios. In essence, what I take from the situation was Pickford made a disgusting challenge, resulting in the injury, but there was neither a red card nor a penalty. Alright, the penalty would be negated due to offside, which apparently he was (didn't see live, like I said), but the red card wouldn't. For the people working VAR to not even consider the sending off is negligent. I mean, like I explained above, the point of the referee is to avoid violence and keep players safe. This is not what happened here. I won't dwell too much on this one. The other from this game was the ruled out Henderson winner late on. I was fuming for hours and it honestly ruined at least part of my day, which is quite rare these days. It's just what I was saying before, the nonsensical idea of wanting inch perfect calls instead of maintaining the integrity of the game. The point of the rule is not to rule out perfectly good goals from precise movements due to a fucking armpit or shoulder being a quarter of an inch in front of the defender. On a cynical note, just like the Spurs hand ball that game Newcastle one of the most undeserved draws I've ever seen, these subjective rules allow the result to be altered. Like straight up. Call it "conspiracy" or whatever, I don't care, there's incentive for a title race, so all the "luck" Liverpool had last season quickly dried up. It's not a coincidence. To allow thuggish behavior from Pickford like that with zero consequence, and he actually played quite well overall, is ridiculous. But yeah, the point of the offside rule is to stop blatant cheating, not to arbitrarily draw lines on a screen to dictate results. The other offside example I'll quickly go over was Inter's penalty incident that was reversed. Lukaku was offside, Eriksen touched the ball in that direction, the defender (Kjaer) played it into Lukaku's path, he drives forward and goes down under the challenge of Donnarumma. Ref blows for a pen, the VAR eventually calls it off for offside, saying the defender played it. To me, I get that reasoning, unlike the other ones, but it's once again an arbitrary ruling. My immediate thought was the defender played it, thus it's not offside, though I also thought it was a dive. Saw the replay and it showed the slight contact, and I still thought it wasn't offside. IDK. Just seems pointless having this technology only to still have arbitrary (wrong) decisions each week.