Football and VAR, broken protocols and out-of-control technology: how do we get out of this?

Today, at exactly half of the 2025-2026 seasonthe facts say that control of the VAR, and more generally of the contribution of technology to the referees’ work, has been lost. It is enough to refer to what happened on the last day of the championship, in particular in Lazio-Fiorentina and in Napoli-Verona, to describe an evident short circuit and ask a banal question: how do we get out of this?

A pulled shirt in the area may or may not be a penalty (Pongracic on Gila in Lazio-Fiorentina), a light contact on a foot (Gila on Gudmunsson, Lazio-Fiorentina again) may or may not be a penalty. A handball may not be a penalty if there is simultaneously a foul by the attacker on the defender (Valentini on Buongiorno, in Naples-Verona). The whistles on the pitch are questionable, the interventions or lack of interventions by the VAR are difficult to understand. The result is that we remain at the mercy of chance, something can be or not be without any reasonable margin of certainty.

We are beyond the controversies of a single team or a single coach. The generalized fact is that the sum of the decisions taken produces such confusion as to make the outcome of every intervention, or lack of intervention, by the VAR is a lottery. Even when faced with images, it becomes impossible to predict which interpretation may prevail. The conclusion that the fans are faced with is that, in this way, everything is worth it. In the sense that the discretion and margin of error of a single referee on the field extends to the sum of discretion and margins of error of multiple people, referee, linesman, Var and Avar, who must interact with each other and do so each time by interpreting their role differently.

We need, and this is clear, a quick correction. Unless we want to hand over football to the logic of gambling, no longer to the rules and their consequent application, but to the random, or arbitrary in the most malicious interpretations, combination of accidental factors. (On Fabio Insenga)