Daisy Christodoulou

The most traditional view of refereeing is that the referee's decision IS the right decision. That is, there is no such thing as an offside goal. If the referee gave it as offside, it WAS offside. His decision is final.

VAR completely destabilises this, and instead introduces the idea of a correct objective reality which technology will bring us closer to than one human on-field referee. But of course, the evidence from that technology still has to be interpreted by humans.

So in the worst-case scenario, VAR undermines the legitimacy of human judgement without replacing it with anything better. Far from removing arbitrary human judgement, VAR simply emphasises just how arbitrary it is.

This aspect of VAR reminds me of nothing so much as German Higher Biblical criticism. If we apply the latest scientific & technological tools to the excavation of Biblical meaning, we'll get closer to what God meant. Or we might just blow up the foundations on which it all rests

The arbitrariness is most clear with offside, where stray toes phases before a goal are proving decisive. I don't think this was anticipated. I thought offsides would be well suited to VAR because they are binary line calls. I was wrong.

The problem with VAR and offside is that it is not clear (at least yet) how teams should adapt, or that it is going to make a consistent impact. As an attacking or defensive team, what can you do to make sure you are not / your opponents are offside?

Of course there has always been an element of randomness in a goalmouth scramble, but it's a more natural and immediately intelligible randomness, not one that takes fifteen minutes to establish.

Contrast with DRS in cricket: like VAR it was intended just to 'get more right decisions', and its introduction has had a similarly unintended consequence in that it has led to more LBWs being awarded, and batsmen no longer being able to rely on the big stride forward.