Then came the Valencia equaliser. If you saw the goal, you’ll understand.
Espanyol’s Martin Braithwaite was trying to burst forward, there was contact between him and Valencia captain Jose Gaya, and it’s a matter of opinion whether the striker was barged and fouled … or not. At any rate, Valencia picked up possession, poured forward themselves and Lino scored a smashing goal that sent the home fans absolutely wild with delight.
Again, there was no VAR intervention. Some will decide that there was no clear and obvious error by the referee; others won’t take that stance.
Finally, and this is the most egregious error, coming in the dying seconds of the match, already at 2-2 and with Espanyol desperately needing a goal to avoid being sent to the second division. Valencia’s Brazilian defender Gabriel Paulista lunges at Braithwaite, scissor tackles the Denmark international’s legs in the area, makes no contact with the ball and quite patently fouls the striker. It’s a textbook penalty.
I dare anybody to say that there wasn’t at least an open-and-shut case for the VAR booth officials to advise Gil Manzano that he needed to look at the incident again. In this crucial moment, the referee is in his same lazy spot — about 15 feet outside the penalty area — and his vision of the challenge is inadvertently blocked by Valencia’s Javi Guerra.
Arguably what we were watching was the very reason VAR was brought into football.
Correcting clear errors throughout the season, where the referee, either by failure or because of some impossible circumstance, hasn’t been able to see or understand an offence and therefore hasn’t been able to serve justice, obviously matters. The points on offer in matches from August to May are also important, so is the idea that a tool as powerful as VAR is consistently credible, helpful and reliable throughout a season.
When it comes to livelihoods, though, when it comes to a club losing millions of euros and potentially making many of its staff unemployed, that’s when we most need VAR to be pinpoint accurate, to intervene with total clarity of purpose and to ensure that there are no injustices during these two or three most dramatic and cataclysmic weekends of the season.
Those of us who watch matches via television or via video clips eventually see precisely what the officials in the VAR booth see. None of us suffer the same pressure as an on-pitch referee who’s often being asked to deal with the sporting equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack. They are surrounded by whirling dervishes, many of whom are intent on deceiving the match official, and the action, played against a cacophony of ambient noise, usually allows for mere split-second visions of the key, polemic actions via which a referee will eventually be venerated or execrated.
Not so the VAR officials. They are soundproofed in their little cubicle, they have extra seconds and usually minutes in which to use their knowledge, judgement and professional skills. Time is on their side. They can see every available angle, and all they have to do is advise the embattled official when, in extremis, they have missed something and made a bad decision in the areas where VAR is permitted to function.
Last weekend and this Sunday, each time at Mestalla, there were calamitous failures, human not technical, that led to disastrous consequences. This needs explaining. This needs to have repercussions. And this needs to be solved. Otherwise, even those of us who still regard VAR as a useful, important tool to help match officials keep pace with an ever-faster sport that is constantly under greater scrutiny, will join ranks with those who’ve already lost faith.
