*Official* Women's Football World Cup 2019 thread

[Uppercut]

VAR is terrible.

 

[Uppercut]

I kind of thought it would damage the game subtly over time as refs gradually took longer and longer to make decisions and the rules incrementally changed in response to everything being endlessly reviewed. But no, it’s pretty much ****ed it up instantaneously.

 

[Ausage]

VAR is terrible.

It's pretty incredible how close to unanimous people about it too.

It's just not a good fit for this sport.

 

[Furball]

I kind of thought it would damage the game subtly over time as refs gradually took longer and longer to make decisions and the rules incrementally changed in response to everything being endlessly reviewed. But no, it’s pretty much ****ed it up instantaneously.

There's so much wrong with it and how it's implemented.

The offside rule - benefit of the doubt goes to the attacker but we'll then call it back because it turns out the attacker's big toe was offside (see Lingard v Netherlands). Needs to borrow from umpire's call so where there's some doubt as with the Lingard call it stays with the on field referees.

The Raheem Sterling 'winner' vs Spurs - OK technically the correct decision was reached however I don't know how you can argue it was a clear error when not one Spurs player appealed for offside.

Likewise the penalty decision tonight - referee has a clear view of the incident and decides it's not a penalty - given she then spend a good 2-3 minutes looking at the incident on replay I don't see how you can argue it's a clear error. Who is it that decides what gets reviewed? And we talk about referees needing to be strong where tbere's a hostile crowd but it would also be a brave ref that would listen to the VAR official in their ear and sticking with their original call.

Goalkeepers encroaching at penalties - keepers that take the piss need clamped down on but the decision to retake Argentina's penalty was a joke - keepers need some sort of forward momentum to help them save a penalty and if you're pinging goalkeepers for stepping forward a fraction of a second before the kicker strikes the ball then again what is the point?

 

[dontcloseyoureyes]

There's so much wrong with it and how it's implemented.

The offside rule - benefit of the doubt goes to the attacker but we'll then call it back because it turns out the attacker's big toe was offside (see Lingard v Netherlands). Needs to borrow from umpire's call so where there's some doubt as with the Lingard call it stays with the on field referees.

The Raheem Sterling 'winner' vs Spurs - OK technically the correct decision was reached however I don't know how you can argue it was a clear error when not one Spurs player appealed for offside.

Likewise the penalty decision tonight - referee has a clear view of the incident and decides it's not a penalty - given she then spend a good 2-3 minutes looking at the incident on replay I don't see how you can argue it's a clear error. Who is it that decides what gets reviewed? And we talk about referees needing to be strong where tbere's a hostile crowd but it would also be a brave ref that would listen to the VAR official in their ear and sticking with their original call.

Goalkeepers encroaching at penalties - keepers that take the piss need clamped down on but the decision to retake Argentina's penalty was a joke - keepers need some sort of forward momentum to help them save a penalty and if you're pinging goalkeepers for stepping forward a fraction of a second before the kicker strikes the ball then again what is the point?

I agree with pretty much all of this (especially the Sterling goal one - for obvious reasons).

In the beginning I was strongly in favour of VAR just because I usually always am in favour of video review, but I've firmly switched my position on it in most sports. It ruins the NBA as well, endless reviews. All people do over here with the NRL is argue about video referee decisions. It's annoying as ****.

 

[OverratedSanity]

Cricket's the only sport I follow where it seems fine tbh. Any sport which has an end to end flow to it has suffered by introducing it.

 

[dontcloseyoureyes]

I think it works fine in tennis as well, at least from what I see of it. But yeah, hard agree.

 

[OverratedSanity]

Basically any game which is broken up into separate events like deliveries/points its fine because by design you already have interruptions. For any other kind of sport, it feels really ****ing annoying.

 

[Ausage]

It's not so bad in the NRL imo. It's only used to check tries at which point there's a natural break in play. The referees do overuse it which would be one of those subtle effects UC mentioned.

Fans complain, but NRL fans will complain about anything.

 

[GIMH]

Goal line technology was all we needed

 

[Furball]

The keepers off the line thing is going to end up like no balls in cricket, where bowlers can merrily overstep until they take a wicket then it's checked.

The referee last night was atrocious - Argentina had a free kick in the lead up to the penalty incident, we were in the middle of making a substitution, Argentina take the free kick anyway and the ref lets them just play on.

She spent a good 7 or 8 minutes ****ing around with VAR for the penalty then added on no time. Why the clock doesn't stop when VAR is being consulted is something I've never understood.

I want to like VAR because I think we should be using technology to help referees get decisions right, but the way it's being implemented just doesn't work.

 

[dontcloseyoureyes]

Not that I think your points are largely incorrect, but I think it should be noted that only one referee at this Cup has ever used VAR before (and I think it was only once?), and I imagine that not all of them are full-time professionals at this stage. The standard of refereeing isn't going to be high.

 

[Uppercut]

VAR changes the rules, and when you change the rules of a game you change what's effective. That's OK if you're doing it deliberately, like when devs on video games make tweaks. But the rule changes aren't rebalances, they're accidental side-effects. So FIFA have inadvertently nerfed through balls by interpreting the offside law literally, increased the number of long pauses, started giving penalties almost any time the ball strikes a hand in the box, and then made those penalties much more difficult to save. What strategies does that reward, and why? What does football start to look like when teams start adapting to those changes?

FIFA have predictably botched the implementation, but I don't think it could ever have been done properly. Most of the football community believed, and still believe, that with VAR you could have exactly the same game but with fewer refereeing mistakes. But it's just not true.

 

[Furball]

Argentina's penalty in the Copa America last night is another baffling one.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

I don't think any of the women have played with VAR before. With the implementation of new rules as well it's like they're using the Women's World Cup for experiments. Not really fair. It did prove that a bad referee won't be helped by VAR.

 

[dontcloseyoureyes]

I don't think any of the women have played with VAR before. With the implementation of new rules as well it's like they're using the Women's World Cup for experiments. Not really fair. It did prove that a bad referee won't be helped by VAR.

I think it was used in the Women's FA Cup final? Or maybe the Champions League final.

 

[Jarquis]

It's not a farce, goalkeepers are supposed to stay on their line. They've been getting away with it for far too long.

Goalkeepers encroaching at penalties - keepers that take the piss need clamped down on but the decision to retake Argentina's penalty was a joke - keepers need some sort of forward momentum to help them save a penalty and if you're pinging goalkeepers for stepping forward a fraction of a second before the kicker strikes the ball then again what is the point?

 

[Lillian Thomson]

The Premier League aren't using VAR for goalkeepers at penalties next season. if they use it for penalty shoot-outs in the knock out stages here, they'll be there all night and keepers will be getting sent off for two yellow cards.

 

[andruid]

It's pretty incredible how close to unanimous people about it too.

It's just not a good fit for this sport.

They should have implemented a rugby style version where the referee had the sole discretion to...nevermind

 

[andmark]

Impressed with the stamina of the Norway and Aus sides. 100 Minutes in and they were still going like steam engines, determined to make the header.