Gavin Cooney

THERE ARE SECRETIVE and baroque organisations of infallible leaders beyond Fifa, as anyone who has recently watched papal succession drama Conclave will know.

The thrust of the movie: the pope is dead, and the world’s various flamboyantly-dressed policemen of human morality gather to elect a successor. Ralph Fiennes is charged with following Catholic law and leading this thorough and confidential recruitment process. (Call him the Marc Canon of the search process.)

We are not spoiling the ending here by referring to Fiennes’ finest moment early in the film, as he gives a pre-election sermon to his fellow cardinals inveighing against the firm-headed traditionalists determined to claim the Papacy and roll back on whatever progressive reforms the Church has recently achieved. His means of doing so is a shrill warning against “certainty”, stressing that doubt is the kernel of faith.

Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery and therefore no need for faith.

Which brings this column to its crisis of faith and its homily against certainty: VAR, mate. Just bin it.

Myles Lewis-Skelly’s sending off against Wolves for Arsenal last Saturday and the overturning of the decision three days later is conclusive proof that VAR does not work.  It is now an irredeemable failure. 

Many of the highest-profile VAR errors to date have been explained by the incompetence of those operating the machinery – most obviously the non-award of Luis Diaz’ plainly onside goal against Tottenham last season – but The Lewis-Skelly Affair has shown that VAR’s failure is not one of quality or expertise, or a result of the social dynamics between referee and the colleague who has to tell him he got something wrong. No, it exposes VAR as being a fundamental, philosophical, ontological failure. 

VAR does not work as it is a false prophet preaching certainty, a certainty that does not – and cannot – exist in football.

The game is a series of subjective decisions, to which their is no absolutely correct answer and Lewis-Skelly’s foul on Matt Doherty is one such example.

Since everyone must have an opinion on it, it is this column’s view that it was a harsh but understandable call on Oliver’s behalf.

Oliver sent off Lewis-Skelly because he saw him catch Matt Doherty above his ankle with his studs showing while making no attempt to play the ball.  Studs showing, and nowhere near the ball? Dangerous, not merely reckless. 

The VAR operator didn’t recommend a review of the incident, and so they evidently either agreed with Oliver’s opinion, or at least understood his rationale for the decision to the point that they knew he would not overturn it.

Arsenal appealed the decision and were successful, as an independent panel took a different view of the incident. The initial contact may be high but the majority of it occurs lower down Doherty’s leg while lacking a huge amount of force? Merely reckless, not dangerous. 

Between these two cross-examinations of the Lewis-Skelly challenge, a vast number of Arsenal fans have shrieked conspiracy and Michael Oliver’s family home has been put under police protection. 

This dark atmosphere stems from the false promise of VAR, that it would be capable of eliminating controversies like these. The reality is VAR can and will only exacerbate these incidents, as it’s effectively moving a subjective decision from a single judge to a majority jury verdict. 

VAR has been a risible attempt at trying to make objective what can and will only ever be subjective. The handball rule has been its most disastrous manifestation. The rule has been endlessly tweaked and re-written in a bid to find some objective criteria for what constitutes an offence, which has led to strict interpretations of the rule without any common-sense regard for its founding principle: did the player deliberately handle the ball to gain an advantage?

Amid all this dancing on the head of a pin, the 2018 World Cup and 2019 Champions League finals were marred with brutal handball penalties that would never have been given in the pre-VAR era. 

The Premier League has broadly addressed these handball issues by hardly penalising it at all anymore, though that memo has yet to go through to Uefa, so the Champions League knockout ties all remain at the whim of one of these mad calls. 

The Premier League has continued to refine its use of VAR as the seasons have gone by, with Howard Webb constantly stressing the “higher bar” needed for intervention nowadays. In other words, the Premier League is improving VAR by using it less. Take that attitude to its logical conclusion, and there’s one way of making a final improvement to VAR: scrap it. 

Prior to VAR, we did not have certainty, but we did have faith. It was a resigned, unenthusiastic faith, but it was a faith, and it was invested in the omnipotent figure of the referee.

Back in those days, the subjective calls were made legitimate by the fact there was only one being whose interpretation of them actually mattered, and their lack of recourse made these calls objective in their own way. 

The lesson of VAR is a game of football ultimately does rest on the infallibility of the person at the centre of it. It shouldn’t take too great an imaginative leap on Fifa’s part to realise this.