Football Germany is constantly discussing the usefulness of the video assistant. This time because of the game between Wolfsburg and Stuttgart. A radical step is overdue.
A fairly ordinary collision in midfield has reignited the discussion about video assistant referees (VAR for short). Stuttgart’s Atakan Karazor is fouled by Wolfsburg’s Maxi Arnold. While the perpetrator is rolling on the ground, the person who was fouled is stunned that he, who has already been given a yellow card, is shown a second yellow card by referee Sven Jablonski. In football, yellow plus yellow means: yellow-red. Off to the shower.
Tumults, Stuttgart’s coach Sebastian Hoeneß is raging on the sidelines. But the Cologne basement where the video assistants work remains silent. No correction, but the TV picture proved: Karazor was innocent, instead Arnold almost kicked him to the hospital. The referee was wrong. Clearly wrong decision. Absurd whistle. But nothing happens. By this scene it must be clear to everyone: the VAR is done. The video evidence deserves the red card. No wrong decision is more damaging to the Bundesliga than the structural injustice that underlies it.
The basic idea was: Football should become fairer and more comprehensible through the interventions of video referees. But is that what he has become? Of course, there were discussions about wrong decisions before the introduction of VAR. And not a few. But the excitement usually died down quickly, and the “scandal whistles” usually evened out over the course of the season.
Since the introduction of the VAR, not a weekend goes by without a fundamental row because of its inconsistent application. Sometimes the Cologne Keller answers, sometimes not. If Karazor had seen red after the collision in question, the VAR would have been allowed to intervene. But according to the absurd rule, he is not allowed to object to yellow-red.
Of course, this is blatantly unfair, and that is why many, including the unfortunate Mr. Jablonski, are demanding that video evidence should also be used for yellow-red in the future. Understandable. Only: the next yellow-red we’ll argue about the correctness of the first yellow. Why wasn’t the VAR allowed to intervene? And then someone will demand: From now on we will check all yellow cards.
At the 2024 European Football Championship, an average of 4.6 yellow cards were shown per game. Just over three goals are scored per Bundesliga game. That’s a good eight (!) potential VAR interventions per game, not even counting dubious handballs and fouls in the penalty area. In the end, the fans are threatened with a dozen agonizing interruptions, in every single game. Pause more than ten times. Fear. Hope. And are waiting for a decision that no one can follow and understand, at least in the stadium, because the controversial scene is not shown there.
As a result, football loses two characteristics that make it so fascinating.
They lie dead and buried in the Cologne video cellar, where the spoilsports fast-forward and rewind in front of their screens and want to create a pseudo-justice that is, firstly, unattainable and the price for which the fans pay dearly. Honestly? Then every now and then it’s better to hear a wrong whistle, an offside that wasn’t offside, a hidden foul that no one saw.
