Tag: VAR

A Referees Perspective on the Women’s World Cup (so far)

Posted on by RJ Allen

Hi, my name is Ian and this is my first post here. I like to start every post with a disclaimer, so please bear with me. 

Disclaimer:

I am not a PRO or FIFA referee. In fact, I’m not even a “professional” referee. I primarily referee adult recreational and youth leagues and write software as my primary line of work. On average, I am involved in around 150 games a season, most of the U16 and over and as many major tournaments as I can find my way into. It is solely my intention to look at incidents and explain how I feel the IFAB Laws of the Game apply, were applied, or should have been applied.

If you’re interested in becoming a referee, please check this link for information on how to locate your state officiating group.

Now that we’ve taken that out of the way, let’s jump on into it…

The Laws of the Game are Pretty Okay

This post is mostly spurred on in response to Charles’ post about the Laws of the Game needing an Overhaul, but I’m not going to directly argue anything. I think Charles did a great job discussing some of the pitfalls of how application of the Laws of the Game have caused a degree of chaos throughout this years World Cup, but I’m willing to argue that they’re actually pretty dang good…it’s just different look than we’re used to seeing, especially in women’s soccer.

The Laws of the Game have been evolving at a rapid pace over the last couple years as has the IFAB. This year, they even went as far as to have a mobile app created to help give more people access to the Laws of the Game without needing a third party PDF reader nor the Google-fu required to know how to get the current Laws and not previous versions.

This World Cup is the first time we’re seeing the 2019-2020 Laws of the Game applied in an actual competition. I believe most of the teams had friendlies throughout the spring that the new Laws were used, but most of those did not have VAR or any of the other intricacies of the full tournament since they were just friendlies.

Between the changes in the Laws of the Game and the introduction of VAR, I think we’re having a peak into the future of the sport at the highest levels.

Ultimately, I think it’s good, but it will take some getting used to. 

I think to facilitate this conversation a bit, I’m going to try and generalize some of the comments and questions I’ve seen come across my Twitter feed and respond directly to them. 

“Why is the Assistant Referee holding their flag down on offside? They should be calling it immediately!”

Offside is an extremely complicated section of the Laws of the Game. In fact, it’s complicated enough that it actually has its own section. It’s complicated to the point that I’m extremely hesitant to even approach the subject, but I’m going to and I’m going to do it with some broad generalizations.

For a while now, the Laws have been working on ironing out a definition between an “offside position” and an “offside offense“. In between those two definitions, there are a list of situations that reset of offside position. This creates a degree of subjectivity, but tries to make concrete that there is a difference. A player can be in an offside position all day and, as long as they don’t become involved in play, never be called for it. That same player who is hanging out offside forever, can be completely saved by a defender making a bad play on a long ball.

At every level of the game, referees and assistant referees are being told to wait and make sure that an offside offense has occurred before putting the flag up. In all games, you’ll sometimes see an assistant have to make a 50 yard run just to make sure that the attacking player commits that offside offense and then have to make the long slog back to the half line to raise the flag. 

This is how it should be. If there’s a chance that someone other than the player in the offside position plays the ball, then you have to wait and see.

The introduction of VAR takes that one step further. 

Now, instead of relying on a single persons line of sight, the referee crew has 4 extra people with an Orwellian amount of cameras that can back up those calls. It’s possible to give an even longer wait and make absolutely sure that there was, in fact, an offside offense before you call off a goal or a potential goal scoring opportunity.

It’s allowed the ability to go from potentially calling a good goal back because of potential offside offense to allowing play to continue until it can be verified that there was an offside offense that needed to be dealt with.

I don’t have any hard numbers, but I’d be willing to be there are more goals that have been allowed because of that wait than there are goals that have been taken back.

“What are defenders supposed to do now? Play with their hands behind their back? This is ruining the game”

Well, you see, this is a fun one, because the Laws haven’t changed too much regarding handling. This years changes mostly just took away some of the vagueness that previous iterations had exposed. Instead of using words like “deliberate” or “intentional” (I wrote about those here), the Laws now try to better define where the hands should and shouldn’t be.

All that said, the couple hand balls that I’ve seen called have always been handling offenses. The difference is that now we have someone watching from another angle that can confidently make that call. 

Let’s have a little thought experiment:

You’re the assistant referee. There’s a quick counter attack starting at the half line and breaking down the nearside of the field. You have to watch three things:

  1. Offside
  2. In/Out of Bounds
  3. Potential Fouls

At the 18 yard box, a cross is fired in and takes a weird bounce. The attacking player is between you and the defender.

Can you make a judgement on why that ball took a weird bounce?

Probably not.

Okay, same scenario, but now you’re the center official. You’re trying to run on something like a diagonal line across the field to keep the bulk of play trapped between you and your assistant referee. Your run had to start from the other third of the field, so you’re going in top gear trying to get back into position ahead of or in line with the play. You see the cross and the ball go off at a weird angle, but you’re about 5 yards behind the defenders shoulder. 

Can you make a judgement call on that weird bounce?

Also, probably not.

In either situation, would you feel confident giving a penalty kick?

I would think no.

This is where VAR solves the problem. The referee still has ultimate responsibility over the match and can make those decisions if need be. However, they also have a barrage of cameras looking at all of the angles to figure out that weird bounce and a voice in their ear telling them whether or not it’s worth going back and having a second look.

If it’s not, don’t sweat it. If it is, go back and make it right.

I heard a saying this morning that went something along the lines of “if it’s a foul in the middle of the field, it’s a foul in the box” and that’s 100% true. The difference being is that one rarely leads to a goal and the other rarely doesn’t. In the interest of maintaining a match, the referee may have hesitation about giving that foul in the box because of that certain outcome.

VAR addresses that hesitation.

In Closing

There are a lot of intricacies in soccer. There always have been and there always will be. With or with out VAR.

At the World Cup though, it’s absolutely imperative that even with all those potential situations, it’s important that everything is as consistent as possible. While I, as a fan, may not agree with all of the calls being made I can easily see a clear line that is being held by the officiating crews. You can see consistency across games and across days that I can really appreciate.

It will take some getting used to at the large stage, but I think in the long run we’ll be better off for it.

Soccer’s Laws Need an Overhaul in the World of VAR

Posted on by RJ Allen

When agrarian societies transition to industrial ones, they often find themselves struggling badly to adapt to a world which contains technology far beyond the scale of what their institutions were designed to accommodate. Systems that worked fine on an informal basis are suddenly exposed to a level of scrutiny and detail that they simply can’t manage. Norms that helped everyone sort things out through rough consensus are obliterated as hyper-technical companies (and the lawyers they hire) carve them to bits.

Soccer is going through a similar transition. And it’s been rough.

We’ve seen two new flashpoints in the past two days at the Women’s World Cup. Two games that hinged on critical penalty calls, with critics firing in all directions about the rules and their implementation. In both cases, the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) was involved. In both cases, the real issue isn’t VAR itself but rather the way VAR interacts with a system of rules designed for a different world.

Soccer is a common law system, and it’s not equipped for the precision of VAR

For 150 years, soccer has been regulated more through feel than through a strict application of the rules. Referees exercise a great deal of discretion, which often produces different calls in different games, based on what seems appropriate in context. That can be frustrating for viewers and players, for obvious reasons, and that frustration has driven us toward standardization and systematic implementation. But the result has been problematic because, to be blunt, soccer’s rules don’t really make any sense. They work as guidelines to instruct the referee, but depend pretty heavily on a solid dose of common sense.

In legal terms, soccer has been a common law system, with referees as judges granted discretion to mete out justice under the broad rules handed down. There are certain things that are hard and immutable. But for the most part, the individual could measure out the rules as seemed appropriate based on their feel of the game.

Suddenly, however, the world has changed. We’re no longer in a common law system with rough justice meted out by a roving judge. Now we’re in a statutory world of strict technicalities and millimeters, with contentious plays assessed in frame-by-frame analyses. In the old world, referees would generally try to apply the vague and confusing rules in a way that broadly made sense, and then would get on with things. In this brave new world, that’s not an option.

That means we now need to go back and reconsider what these rules are actually for, and whether they can possibly achieve their objectives as currently formulated.

VAR is forcing us to reconsider the rules for penalties and offside calls

By examining the two recent examples, we can see how this plays out. The first case came in France’s match against Norway, when France earned a decisive penalty after Ingrid Engen was spotted with her cleat pressed firmly into Marion Torrent’s knee, after she followed through on a kick.

To many, this was an injustice, albeit one that appeared to be correct according to the rules. After all, Engen had ‘gotten the ball’ and merely clipped Torrent after. ‘Are defenders not supposed to follow through?’ was the common refrain.

But by the laws of the game, there is nothing surprising here. Getting the ball has never been a defense against dangerous play, and putting your cleats into someone’s knee is a foul. However, for centuries, we’ve operated in a world where ‘that would be a foul anywhere else on the pitch’ has been an ubiquitous cliché. Technically, many plays in the penalty area were fouls, but referees simply didn’t call them. We all knew it. You could get away with more in the box than you could outside it.

With VAR, however, the rough and tumble flow of the game – and the vague sense of discretion employed by the referee – has been replaced by a strict enforcement of the rules.

Is that good or bad? I would argue that it’s good. Defending should be hard. It’s extremely difficult to score goals, and we don’t need to make it even harder by giving defenders special rights to commit challenges in the box that would be whistled anywhere else. The purpose of the rule about the penalty box is to shape behavior, and giving referees an additional tool to accomplish that objective seems like a clear good.

Will strict enforcement of this rule produce more penalties? In the short run, yes. But in the long run, players will adapt, and the game will be better for it.

But this brings us to the second case, which came in Australia’s comeback win over Brazil. Here, the deciding goal was an own goal, which was authorized by VAR based on a bizarre claim that Sam Kerr was not influencing play by being in an offside position since she did not attempt to play the ball, or interfere physically with the defender who was trying to play the ball. But why was Monica trying to play the ball? Because she knew Kerr was behind her! If the point of the offside rule is to ensure that attacking players can’t gain an advantage by being in an illegal position, the rule completely broke down in this case. I have looked at the rules (such as they are) and it’s possible that this is a literally correct decision. But it’s certainly not clear, because the rules are vague and confusing.

Once again, people asked: what are defenders supposed to do? Faced with a split-second decision, they are expected to assess whether the attacker (who is behind them) was offside when the ball was played, and if so, let the ball go and hope they were right? Or they can play the ball, and thus reward the opposition for having been offside. It’s utter nonsense and a total perversion of what the offside rule is supposed to do.

The rules of soccer are shockingly vague

People who know the laws of the game all seem to agree that this really is the rule (and I believe them). That said, they have a hard time pointing to where exactly in the laws this is specified, because the laws of soccer are rather shockingly ill-defined. Compare the offside rule – the most complex law in the game – to any random section of the Major League Baseball rulebook, and you’ll see what I mean.

Here’s an example of how baseball’s rules are written:

  • 5.09 Making an Out
  • (a) Retiring the Batter
  • A batter is out when:
  • (1) His fair or foul fly ball (other than a foul tip) is legally caught by a fielder;
  • Rule 5.09(a)(1) Comment: A fielder may reach into, but not step into, a dugout to make a catch, and if he holds the ball, the catch shall be allowed. A fielder, in order to make a catch on a foul ball nearing a dugout or other out-of-play area (such as the stands), must have one or both feet on or over the playing surface (including the lip of the dugout) and neither foot on the ground inside the dugout or in any other out-of-play area. Ball is in play, unless the fielder, after making a legal catch, steps or falls into a dugout or other out-of-play area, in which case the ball is dead. Status of runners shall be as described in Rule 5.06(b)(3)(C) Comment.
  • A catch is the act of a fielder in getting secure possession in his hand or glove of a ball in flight and firmly holding it; providing he does not use his cap, protector, pocket or any other part of his uniform in getting possession. It is not a catch, however, if simultaneously or immediately following his contact with the ball, he collides with a player, or with a wall, or if he falls down, and as a result of such collision or falling, drops the ball. It is not a catch if a fielder touches a fly ball which then hits a member of the offensive team or an umpire and then is caught by another defensive player. In establishing the validity of the catch, the fielder shall hold the ball long enough to prove that he has complete control of the ball and that his release of the ball is voluntary and intentional. If the fielder has made the catch and drops the ball while in the act of making a throw following the catch, the ball shall be adjudged to have been caught.

That’s one section of one subpoint of Rule 5.09. There are 14 more points under 5.09(a). There’s also a 5.09(b), 5.09(c), 5.09(d), and 5.09(e). And it goes on and on like this for hundreds of pages.

Soccer’s rulebook is nothing like this. What are the rules for added time? The referee adds some time. You know, however much they think is appropriate. What are the rules for throw-ins? They should take place roughly where the ball went out, more or less. Except when they don’t and it’s not worth arguing. And on and on.

If VAR is here to stay, the rules are going to need a significant overhaul

The laws of soccer are full vaguely defined principles that are designed to give the referee the ability to guide the game. They very much do not provide universal criteria for guaranteeing that the principles can be achieved. As a result, they are exceptionally ill-designed to handle the level of precision and objectivity that VAR is meant to bring.

This isn’t a problem with the rules per se, nor a problem with VAR as such. It’s a problem with the combination. And it’s something that’s going to have to be fixed, with more than a few minor clarifications.

Ultimately, the purpose of a law is to produce a desired result. If VAR is the new way of life, we’re going to need a significant overhaul of the rules, to bring them in line with a world of minute attention to detail and objective judgments. The key question: what is a rule actually meant to accomplish, and can it do so if enforced in these new terms?

The law on fouls in the box seems fine. Defenders will adjust and the game will go on. By contrast, the offside law and the law on handballs seem like ticking time bombs. It’s up to the International Football Association Board to get to work on defusing them. Sooner rather than later, hopefully.

VAR is Here: Be Careful What You Wish For

Posted on by RJ Allen

There was a lot of excitement when it was announced that this World Cup would feature Video Assistant Referee (VAR). This was often framed on equality grounds. The men had it, and it would have been absurd to not make it available for the women as well. But in a classic case of ‘be careful what you wish for,’ many folks have recently discovered that they’re not actually that thrilled with VAR now that it’s here.

To be honest, I find myself in that group. And it’s a little surprising.

I’ve always been a fan of integrating technology into the game to ensure that referees can get calls right. But the devil is in the details, and it increasingly feels like the details are killing us. In this case, a combination of two things I’ve always liked (instant replay and a clarification of the incoherent ‘deliberate handball’ rule) have combined to produce a monster.

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Now, with almost any ball hitting an arm in the box producing a penalty, and with the ability to catch every millisecond of play with video review, we’re going to get more and more of these penalties from a player is hit point-blank in the arm.

In fact, if I were coaching a team, I would encourage them to deliberately shoot at the arm. It’s clearly a winning strategy (Liverpool just won the men’s Champions League final this way), and it’s viable 25 yards away from the goal where the chance of creating a real goal is minuscule.

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But for all that, the real problem with VAR has been the interminable delay between an offside play and the whistle actually being blown. This is the policy because they need to let play continue to see what the result would have been.

We saw this to an extreme degree in Australia-Italy where probably a dozen plays were allowed to run out, only to be retroactively nullified by the offside flag.

The explanation for this change is here:

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The principle does make sense. They feel that a false positive is unrecoverable (you can’t recreate the state of play) but a false negative is harmless (you can just reset play to where offside infraction took place). But in practice, a false negative is anything but harmless. There is a lot of emotion and energy wrapped up in the play, and it all gets wasted for very little benefit.

That’s frustrating for the fans at home, but also for the players themselves. After the Australia-Italy match, Sam Kerr said it was “really frustrating” that plays were called back so often, breaking up the game, and also stealing time (since only five minutes were added despite all the delays) that they would have desperately wanted to try and find a late equalizer. For Italy, Cristiana Girelli said much the same: “Sometimes you score the goal and then you have to wait to check. It’s strange.”

In a pre-VAR world, the assistant referee would have flagged these plays immediately, and we all would have gone on with our business. As Kerr said, “if it’s offside, it’s offside. Just call it.” 

There were mistakes in that world, absolutely. And it’s understandable that people want to fix the mistakes. I want to fix the mistakes too. But it sometimes feels like the technology has overtaken the purpose for which it was designed.

There’s a close analogy here to baseball – my other favorite sport – where the advent of instant replay has turned something that went uncalled for 150 years (the millimeter of space that often emerges between a basestealer and the base when they pop up) into a subject for unending litigation. It’s technically true that umpires were simply missing this call for all those years, but it’s also true that no one was harmed in the process and the game is now more tedious for all that it’s technically right.

Still, the reality is that VAR probably isn’t going anywhere, and is only likely to be expanded into new zones going forward. That is unlikely to include women’s soccer in most venues, at least for a little while. But while there’s clearly an element of inequality in this – the new technology being available for men and not women – we also might want to savor the fresh air while it’s still available. And hope that the powers-that-be come up with some sensible rule changes to manage the downside here, and make the application of the technology fit more seamlessly into the free-flowing, exciting game that we’ve loved for so long.

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