Ex Referee: EPL 'perverse' to ignore VAR in 2018-2019
Keith Burkett wrote a fascinating piece on the Telegraph that is worth the full read. The technology is already in use in Serie A, and will become more widely available across Europe as La Liga plan to follow suit in the upcoming campaign.
We will only be drawing on one extract in here (see below), in which Burkett laments the fact that the English FA won’t be using a technology that helped officials get “99.35%” decisions right, as opposed to 95.6%. This was according to figures the former referee - who is now the consultant in the “Youaretheref” feature, says he was shown by FIFA.
VAR had a mostly positive impact at the World Cup, helping overturn a massive Neymar dive for a penalty against Costa Rice in the Group Stages, as well as helping Sweden get a penalty given against South Korea.
What is remarkable is the way Burkett shuts down any criticism that the technology was causing time to be wasted, saying that only 20 incidents were reviewed by the on-field official himself.
Here is a particularly key passage:
If they were making the same decision today I think they would come to a very different conclusion. The figures I have been shown by Fifa state that there were a total of 455 incidents checked by the VAR during the World Cup, an average of 7.1 per game. Only 20 of those actually led to a review by the on-field official, with 17 decisions changed as a result. What that means is that without VAR the on-field officials got 95.6 per cent of their decisions correct, but with VAR that went up to 99.35 per cent. That is a huge difference, and I can assure you that the referees themselves cannot wait for VAR to be introduced, because without it they are being hung out to dry. Mistakes are inevitable, but we have access to technology that can help them make the right call nearly every time, particularly on black-and-white issues such as offside. Not allowing them access to that technology is perverse.