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Like many, the Liverpool manager’s view on video assistant
referee has soured due to the way it’s been implemented.
Nearly everyone liked the idea of VAR before it arrived, of
video assistant referee and the use of technology to try to ensure
the right calls were made in football, thinking of all the times
clear and obvious errors might have been quickly overturned with
such a system.
In practice, for every clear and obvious error quickly and
painlessly reversed, there feels as though there are a dozen or
three cases of everyone being forced to wait interminably as VAR is
used to try to determine millimetre decisions that nobody was ever
bothered by.
“I used to be one of the people who said VAR is a good idea, but
I’m really not sure I would say that again to be honest,” was
Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp’s take on a night when VAR again had
everybody standing around for minutes on end as it chased
perfection.
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In the end against FC Midtjylland, it probably got all the calls
right. In the strictest sense, the system worked. Yet for the
players in the stadium and the fans watching at home, it was all
more than a little confusing and tiresome—and on sum, it likely
didn’t change the result.
“It just took too long,” Klopp added, explaining that his
primary complaint is the way it takes the players out of the flow
of the game. “I think in the end—I didn’t see it back but I think
in the end the decisions were right. But it was so difficult and it
took three or four minutes.”