This reminds me of the air traffic control transcripts we occasionally see here -- thankfully with much lower stakes, as this is just about a football game!
There's a lot of dark discussion going on about incompetent or even biased referees, but from reading this transcript it seems very clear to me that there are a bunch of easy improvements that could be made to the VAR protocol:
- The session ends with a standard "check complete", without confirming the specific outcome that was agreed on. "Check complete, player onside, repeat onside" would have given the on-field referee a chance to catch the error.
- There's evidently a well-defined chain of communications (PGMOL Hub Ops -> Replay operator -> VAR -> Referee). But when the replay operator spotted the error, the VAR was slow to understand, so word never reached the referee. Maybe hub ops and/or the replay operator should have an emergency "PAUSE THE GAME" button.
- Once the game had restarted (with the wrong decision), the backroom operators didn't feel empowered to intervene any more. "Oli's calling in to say delay the game" "They've restarted the game. Can't do anything". Clearly in hindsight it would have been better to pause to overturn the decision, as long as it was within say 30 seconds.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 81.6 ms ] threadThere's a lot of dark discussion going on about incompetent or even biased referees, but from reading this transcript it seems very clear to me that there are a bunch of easy improvements that could be made to the VAR protocol:
- The session ends with a standard "check complete", without confirming the specific outcome that was agreed on. "Check complete, player onside, repeat onside" would have given the on-field referee a chance to catch the error.
- There's evidently a well-defined chain of communications (PGMOL Hub Ops -> Replay operator -> VAR -> Referee). But when the replay operator spotted the error, the VAR was slow to understand, so word never reached the referee. Maybe hub ops and/or the replay operator should have an emergency "PAUSE THE GAME" button.
- Once the game had restarted (with the wrong decision), the backroom operators didn't feel empowered to intervene any more. "Oli's calling in to say delay the game" "They've restarted the game. Can't do anything". Clearly in hindsight it would have been better to pause to overturn the decision, as long as it was within say 30 seconds.