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Oh such a topic so close to my heart!! Back in 2018 when VAR was being trialled in Major League Soccer I wrote about it here: https://aftn.ca/why-var-will-never-get-it-right/. I was alarmed by the idea that what was driving VAR was a pitch that it would finally bring certainty to the judgment decisions that referees are forced to make. This feeds into a cultural hunger for certainty and a delusion that, even in complex systems,if we just use the right tools some form of objective reality is finally attainable. The unquestioned assumptions about what is possible have created a bunch of pain and have really ruined the flow of top level football. Rugby has got it right I think, and oth cricket and tennis do in fact use technology for certainty in situations where the the outcome can be knowable. I was surprised by the fact that offside was so complicated to judge, and I think that AI may actually provide us with reliable ruling on the application of the law if we can all agree on what offside actually is. If the law was amended slightly to be judged by the boot of an attacker or defender (as opposed to any playable body part) it might be easy to even embed boots with chips to make this an automatic ruling. Like goal line technology, the referee could be alerted by a wrist watch alarm. But keeping VAR for offside under the current conditions doesn't make sense becasue you are just deferring the judgement call to another team of referees who have to make a judgement call at a different scale. So we might as well leave the calls with the AR and the referees now, and go back to complaining about how THEY got it wrong. At least it would improve the flow of the game again!

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Hi C hris, yes I think you're right about VAR trying to bring certainty where there can be none. In cricket the 'umpire's call' is one way around this, backing the on-field decision where it's close. In rugby they have to see conclusiive evidence to overturn a decision. I see neither of these in VAR at the moment, and it's with worse for it. Going with the boot/foot for offside would be one way to reduce the confusion.

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