Does Bruno Fernandes’ ‘farce’ expulsion prove that VAR is useless?

A disputed expulsion in Great Britain in the match between Manchester United and Tottenham which ended 3-0 for the Londoners, put the VAR (or the VAR, take your pick) back in the dock, guilty of not having prevented the referee from making a gross mistake. The controversy was relaunched by The Athletic which, provocatively, asks: “How many levels of refereeing does English football need before it can make a correct decision?”. The images, moreover, do not leave much doubt in this regard. The offensive midfielder of the ‘red devils’, Bruno Fernandes, stretches, slips, and enters in a sprawling manner on Maddison, raising his leg slightly and hitting the opponent A clumsy, uncoordinated but certainly not bad intervention. The effects on the Tottenham midfielder are practically zero.

Referee Chris Kavanagh had no doubts, also because he is not far from the action, although partially covered by Ugarte and Romero. High leg: red card for serious foul play and, presumably, for the dangerousness of Fernandes’ action. At the VAR there is Peter Banks who sees the video with the offending entrance clearly. Yet he doesn’t intervene. The reason? There would be no conditions to overturn a decision made on the field. No checks, no checks. Fernandes has to leave the pitch as the Old Trafford fans boo.

At this point, two other important elements enter to complete this puzzle. The first is the players’ version. It is the Portuguese player himself who confirms that Maddison made the same assessment as him: it is undoubtedly a foul, but never a sending-off foul. The second is the judgment of the disciplinary commission of the English federation which agrees with Manchester United’s appeal and removes the disqualification (and therefore the red card) against Bruno Fernandes. In short, while not going into the merits of who is right or not, the picture of what happened is now clear to everyone, fans and professionals. The question The Athletic asks itself is: if VAR does not intervene in these cases, is it right to abolish it?

The gray space

Situations like those that happened at Old Trafford highlight, once again, that gray space in which technology seems useless. Or rather, helpless. That is, those decisions that apparently seem right, especially at first glance, so as not to be overturned at the VAR but which then prove to be so obviously incorrect that they do not survive the posthumous judgment of a disciplinary commission. The VAR, from the moment of its appearance, has made sense to exist only with one objective: to ensure that the percentage of errors committed by the refereeing trio is always lower, always smaller. Yet, if you look closely at this ‘solid’ logic, you realize the cracks it brings with it. The illusion of ‘objectively’ correct decisions is a utopia, and remains an illusion. VAR is not a panacea for referees and perhaps, after all, it doesn’t even make their work on the pitch easier. Even offside reports, which are apparently clearer to examine, often leave doubts. Shoulders half a centimeter forward, walking knees that surpass the vertical lines imposed by technology for a trifle, hips where ‘there is no light’.

And then, it’s fair to say: How much has the cheering experience of the people present at the stadium or sitting on the sofa changed? Decisions that arrive after many minutes of fear, spasmodic and stinging waiting. A limbo of physical suffering, without knowing or having any idea what is happening, waiting for the referee to raise an arm high or point to the center of the pitch. A torture that involves recoveries over 90% that are increasingly exhausting.

The Athletic, at the end of its piece, recalls how the English clubs were called, last June, to express their opinion on maintaining or abolishing the VAR. Only Wolverhampton had the courage, very romantic, to ask themselves: Let’s try to go back to that football imperfect but more authentic? And maybe he wasn’t entirely wrong. Who knows how the English clubs, but also the Italian ones, would vote today. Technology has always been a fantastic tool available to human beings but perhaps, sometimes, it would be right to delegate fewer tasks to it, especially in sport. If it has to be a mistake, after all, it is always better for it to be committed by a human being, a symbol of imperfection and transience, than for a machine to which we entrust the task of pursuing perfection.