It is impossible to compare the technology applied to sports for an almost trivial reason: sports are, by definition, different from each other. Let's take tennis, for example: comparing the “hawk eye” technology with the VAR is an operation without any sense. The “hawk eye” electronically judges whether a ball has bounced off or on the court. We can compare the "margin of error" because perhaps not everyone is aware of the fact that even the technology applied to a tennis court provides a margin of error of a couple of centimeters. Yet we do not remember any player who challenged the verdict expressed by the software used because the professionals are well aware that any margin of error applies to anyone, themselves or their opponents.
Public communication of the decisions taken
It is a request made on many occasions by those who compare football and rugby. The mentality of the players of this sport is enormously different from football: perhaps due to the frequency of clashes or the necessary correctness aimed at avoiding serious accidents, fair-play distinguishes this activity to a greater extent than other sports. Precisely, by virtue of this different sporting culture, listening to the referee during the match has also become normal, just as it is not surprising that protests are reduced to a minimum and, when present, presented in a very polite and respectful way. Can we expect that this model can also be brought into football? The answer is a firm no. We all know the reasons: football players are much more inclined to protest beyond the lines, they often exaggerate in tones and words. Football is the most loved and followed sport by young people: think what a bad example they could get from listening, through the referee's microphone, to a blasphemy shot by a footballer! Is a comparison with American football more acceptable? No, they are not similar sports, quite the opposite: they are very distant sports conceptually and for development on the pitch but what could be introduced is the communication model. In American football technology had been applied to competition for more than 20 years. To be precise, the technology in American football has been present continuously since 1999. In reality, however, instant replay has been around for much longer, even since the 1980s (and had already been empirically proven in the late 1960s). It was abandoned at the beginning of the 90s because the various franchises proved to be less convinced of the experiment and, after seven years of decisive errors, they decided to return to technology by introducing a great novelty: the challenge. Speaking of communication, American football is very different from rugby. Unlike rugby, in fact, the head referee (the one with the white hat, so to speak: the others have a black hat) communicates with the public only the decisions consequent to flag (the yellow flags thrown on the field in case of infringements) or a challenge. Could we expect such a system in football? The answer, as far as I'm concerned, is yes, with a clarification: the referees will certainly not be able to explain every decision taken. This is because, during a match, the referees make about 200 decisions in 90 minutes plus added time and it is clear that it would be impossible to explain every single decision. Instead, I am inclined to speculate that the referees will be able to explain the decisions made after being called to On Field Review. It would be an appreciable communication but that would add nothing. Why? Simple: if after an On Field Review a referee sends off a player, awards or revokes a penalty kick, concedes or cancels a goal for offside, they do not even need to explain what he has decided: it is obvious.
The challenge
I don't know how it will be defined but we will certainly get there: it is a natural evolution of technology and, not surprisingly, it exists in almost all sports. There is the demand by tennis players, there is the challenge in American football (the famous red handkerchief thrown on the field by the head coach), it exists in NBA basketball (introduced last season to the extent of one per game and confirmed for the next year), baseball (although not everywhere), volleyball, etc. I have never hidden it and have always supported the same thesis since day one of the VAR. I am absolutely in favour of the challenge in football for two well-defined reasons: 1. It is an optimal way to empower coaches, players and managers. Once invested with the task of calling a referee to the On Field Review, they themselves will realize how difficult it is to make a complex decision in a matter of seconds; 2. VAR is a technology that must be available to football, not only to referees. The VAR was designed to avoid that a competition is decided by an error of the referee, but does not mean that the VAR can make a mistake or, as more often happens, it cannot intervene on episodes that are very close to the limit but do not coincide with a clear and evident error. For this reason, precisely to concretize the concept of technology available to football, the tool cannot be used only by the referees but should also be used by the clubs. Of course, the actual use would not change: the referee will still have to make the final decision. Will we get there? I am convinced. Probably not immediately but, if I had to bet, I would bet it will be decided on the Qatar 2022 World Cup.
Post-match explanation of decisions
There is another point on which we have been discussing for some time and which is independent of the VAR: the post-match communication of the referees. The personal position, in this area, is of partial closure: no to the referees in the post-match press conference, yes to explanations of what happened but after the decisions of the sports judge. Postponing any referee declarations to a moment after the decisions of the sports judge is a must to prevent a statement on the matter from affecting disciplinary sanctions. Think of a referee who, explaining his own decision, should even implicitly underline the gravity of an infringement: the sports judge (who does not live on Mars and who would read the statements) could be influenced by what was declared. On the contrary, my answer is a firm no to the presence of the referees at the press conference. The reason for this position is trivial: the press is generally not interested in understanding but in creating attention. Any questions would not be based on understanding an explanation but on finding a starting point for discussion. The referees would find themselves in front of an audience that has had plenty of time to view images several times that the referees, just out of the shower, have not yet been able to see. Clearly they would find themselves in the position of having to comment on episodes that they may not even remember, with obvious and easily understandable difficulties (and there would be predictable litanies on "he does not want to admit the mistake" or "pretends not to remember in order not to answer"). On the other hand, I believe that the time has come for the Italian Referees Association to enter the twenty-first century. It is inconceivable that an association of this kind still does not have a press office and a communications manager. In my ideal of modern association, the AIA should have a PR Officer and a series of deputies trained in communication (which does not mean "educated on what they have to say" but "able to speak in public with a good command of the Italian language") to be sent in the various transmissions that request it and not to judge an episode but to explain the rules.
Source: Luca Marelli/Fischiettomania
