Why No One Trusts VAR Anymore...

Hi all 🙂

We’re back today, and better than ever. As of writing this post, there are 2,417 of you beauties in the audience and we appreciate that you’ve all decided to join Today FC: the only team at the top of the table, and your inbox.  

Now, onto the football. Today we talk about:

• VAR, and why trust in it is at an all-time low right now. 

That’s right another VARticle. We’ve become VARticle FC. 

Quick trivia question for you:

We’ll tell you the answer at the end of today’s issue.

But first, here’s your FRONT THREE. 

Cue dramatic news music

Read time: 5 minutes, 37 seconds.

The Front Three

AC Milan break a troubling streak. Yesterday, AC Milan defeated PSG 2-1 at the San Siro to keep their hopes alive of going through to the knockout rounds. Tuesday’s win was the first time Milan had come back to win a Champions League match since October 21, 2009. Massive win for the Rossoneri, as they pull to within a point of PSG with two matches remaining in the group stages. Who will make it through in this group? Reply to this email and let us know your thoughts. 

USL finalizes historic deal. Big news for American soccer. Yesterday, the USL announced that they reached a deal with CBS, which looks massively promising in terms of growing the league. Here are the key terms:

• CBS Sports will broadcast 100 matches a year through the 2027 USL and USL One seasons.

• These matches, in the words of USL’s statement, “will air across the CBS Television Network and Paramount+, CBS Sports Network and CBS Sports Golazo Network”. 

• The deal doesn’t stop at just broadcasting matches, though. CBS will also provide editorial coverage on USL matches through their Golazo in-studio segments, as well as written reporting and analysis on their websites and newsletters. 

Fluminense win dramatic Copa Libertadores. Since we didn’t cover it on Monday, we wanted to give our flowers to the Brazilian side who just booked their place in the Fifa Club World Cup with their 2-1 win over Boca Juniors on Saturday. Here are all the teams that will be competing at the World Cup in December. Do you think any of them have a chance against City? Let us know. 

Quote of the Day 💬

It’s time for our second-ever Quote of the Day, and we’re already switching it up, because today’s wasn’t said by one person, but thousands. During the second half of their home match against Newcastle, Dortmund fans held up a banner taking aim at UEFA and their decision to make changes to next season’s Champions League. Along with a link to the website for their campaign, here is what the fans had to say to that decision:

The beautifully flattering drawings on the banner above are of FIFA president Gianni Infantino, Paris Saint-Germain chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi and Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli.

Here’s a quick reminder on the major changes coming to the UCL starting next season:

• The tournament will increase from 32 teams to 36.

• Teams will be split up into four pots, with Pot 1 including the reigning champions and the top eight clubs based on their coefficients (aka, all the other best teams). Pots 2 to 4 will be arranged based on club coefficients.

• The teams eliminated before the round of 16 will not drop down to the Europa League. They’re done (as far as playing European football is concerned for that season). 

Tldr: It’s a diet version of the Super League big clubs proposed during the pandemic. 

Dortmund fans also threw fake gold coins on the field to show their belief that UEFA’s decision to alter the tournament was fueled purely by a need to squeeze more money out of the competition. We at Today FC would be utterly shocked if we found out this was the case.  

Have We Ever Trusted VAR Less Than We Do Right Now?

On Sunday, Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta spoke to the press after his team’s 1-0 loss to Newcastle. As soon as he took the podium, there was something different about him. One would be hard-pressed to find a time when the Spaniard has given an animated post-match interview. But today, he had good reason. His team’s match against Newcastle was full of controversial VAR moments, but none of them were more alarming than the play that lost them the match: Anthony Gordon’s goal. 

There was more outcry against VAR to come, as the next day marked a real turning point with regard to public perception of VAR. 

Chelsea’s matchup with Spurs put just about every problem with VAR on display. After almost 111 minutes of late flags, questionable no-calls, to agonizingly long checks, even NBC commentators Jon Champion and Graeme Le Saux could not help but take a few swipes at the way VAR handled certain moments. 

When trying to make sense of Chelsea striker Nicholas Jackson’s positioning during the offside check on Moises Caicedo’s disallowed goal, Le Saux made a disclaimer on his assessment of where he believes the line marking Jackson’s position would have been.

“I am making it up”, he said. 

Champion then remarked back, “Maybe [the VARs] are too”.

Perhaps after realizing the gravity of what he said, Champion attempted to cool things down by stating:

“[That was] probably an unfair and unkind remark, but this is so frustrating because all we’ve come here for is to see a decent game of football, not people playing around with video machines.”

Judging by the current conversation around VAR, the public’s trust in it has never seemed quite as low as it is right now. 

VAR has always been an addition to the game mired in controversy, and refereeing is always scrutinized by the public. But there’s a difference between scrutiny and distrust, and this season’s controversies are revealing why the former has changed to the latter recently. 

It’s become clear to me that the mistakes made by VARs are not the biggest issue, but rather PGMOL’s refusal to be proactive. After the massive fallout from Luis Diaz’s disallowed goal, there is no excuse for VAR to not have access now to adequate camera angles or technology to ensure that the correct call is made. However, in back-to-back days this has been the case. 

Let’s use Anthony Gordon’s goal as an example. The problem with Gordon’s goal is not that it wasn’t disallowed, but rather that it couldn’t possibly have been disallowed because the VARs lacked two crucial things:

• The technology to see whether or not the ball had gone out of play

• The required camera angles to see if Joelinton might have been offside

Ultimately, VAR did not allow the goal because it was the right call, they allowed the goal because it was the only call that the VAR was equipped to make. 

At this point in the season, there is no excuse for there to be any questions about the protocol VAR is using to train its officials. However, during the Chelsea and Spurs match, the fourth official put his flag up so late on Caicedo’s disallowed goal that Graeme Le Saux called it “crazy”. 

The response from PGMOL and the FA has also not helped. First, PGMOL refused to put out a statement explaining what happened during either day’s matches. Instead, the FA reached out to Arsenal after the club put out a statement crying out for PGMOL to “address the standard of officiating and focus on action which moves us all on from retrospective analysis, attempted explanations, and apologies.”. 

In other words, “be proactive”. 

Then Tuesday, reports began to surface of media personalities being told to tone down their criticism of referees. Keith Hacket, former head of PGMOL, had this to say:

“I was aware of the two people receiving a phone call and instructed to tie the line and to quieten down in the criticism of match officials”. 

Ultimately, nothing PGMOL, or the FA has done makes me confident in their ability to assess and fix the clear problem with their system. They have seemed to be more interested in keeping people quiet. PGMOL has put out statements, encouraged longer checks, put more officiating supervision on matches than ever before, all to give the illusion of more thorough refereeing. 

All to buy themselves more time. 

However, they have not done the work behind the scenes to create a more thorough and reliable system. 

But what do you think? Respond to this email and let us know. 

Full Time. That’s all we’ve got for today, folks. Thanks so much for reading and enjoy the football today. 

Take care ❤️

Trivia answer: c) Brentford.

More Good Stuff 👍

Eric Devin of The Guardian wrote a great article about Le Havre and how they’re the latest team winning by bringing the “Moneyball” philosophy to football. 

A year ago no one wanted to sign Luis Palma. Now he’s starting in the Champions League.  Find out how the Honduran winger pulled it off in this wonderful article by Isaac Suarez of Marca.  

Chelsea’s Nicholas Jackson took a page out of Ronaldo’s book when celebrating his hat trick against Spurs on Monday.

Was this forwarded to you? Subscribe here.

Have any questions/just wanna talk? Contact us here.