The Game’s Gone

On Wednesday 12th March, Real Madrid dumped their local rivals Atletico Madrid out of the Champions’ League at the last-16 stage in a penalty shoot-out after the two sides were deadlocked at 2-2 on aggregate.

I don’t have a TNT Sports subscription, or a dodgy Fire Stick, so I didn’t see the match. However, on social media I did see the penalty which was taken by Julián Álvarez in the shoot-out, which VAR determined should be ruled out because Álvarez took two touches when taking spot-kick – the first allegedly being with his standing left foot, the second being with the right foot to send the ball into the goal. Social media showed six separate replays of the offending penalty kick, each time zooming in on this errant left foot, which VAR determined had slid under the weight of the player and made contact with the ball.

I have watched these six separate replays three separate times, and I cannot positively determine that Álvarez touched the ball. VAR took one minute and eight seconds to determine that he had in fact touched the ball, presumably with the officials donning jeweller’s eyepieces to spot the left foot of Álvarez caressing the ball with a gossamer-like touch. A straw poll on Sky Sports website revealed that 77% of those polled believed that the penalty should not have been chalked off and Atletico’s manager, Diego Simeone, while refusing to criticise the officials, said that:

“I just saw the image of the penalty – the referee said that when Julián stepped and kicked, he touched the ball with his foot, but the ball didn’t move. That’s something to discuss about whether it was a goal or not, but I’m proud of my players. When he plants his foot and kicks, the ball doesn’t move even a little bit. But if VAR called it, I’ve never seen a penalty called by VAR, but it’s still valid, and they’ll have seen that he touched it. I want to believe they’ll have seen that he touched it.”

Because there is no provision in the rules for penalties in shoot-outs to be retaken, it was decided that the penalty should be considered as missed and the shoot-out continued with Real Madrid 2-1 ahead. They subsequently won the shoot-out 4-2 and so progressed to the quarter finals.

Video Assisted Refereeing

VAR has been one of a number of ‘innovations’ in the modern game which has had a deleterious effect on football. The Álvarez penalty decision is just one of a number of high-profile errors which have been made by VAR, which was introduced across Europe and subsequently England on the basis that it would eradicate clear and obvious refereeing errors. In England this season, VAR itself has made the following clear and obvious errors:

• On 19th January 2025, VAR informed referee Anthony Taylor that a goal scored by Nottingham Forest’s Chris Woods in their match against Southampton should be disallowed because Woods had come from an offside position and, in a challenge for the ball, he impeded the Southampton defenders. It was subsequently found that Woods had not touched the ball and an independent panel determined that the goal was good.

• On 23rd November 2024, Brentford’s Christian Norgaard was sent off for serious foul play for a foul on Everton’s Jordan Pickford after the referee, who initially took no action, was directed to review the incident via VAR and decided to send Norgaard off. On appeal, his three-match ban was overturned.
• On 27th October 2024, West Ham’s Danny Ings won a penalty for his team when he was brought down in the area by Mathijs de Ligt in their game against Manchester United. Referee Dave Coote initially waved play on, but was advised by VAR to review the incident, which resulted in a penalty to West Ham. Howard Webb, chief of the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOL) later stated that the penalty should not have been given. Man Utd’s manager at the time, Erik Ten Hag, was sacked following the resulting 2-1 defeat.
• On 25th August 2024, Bournemouth’s Dango Outtara had his late winner against Newcastle United cancelled out for an alleged handball after the referee was instructed to do so by VAR. The referee was also not called upon to check the incident on the pitch side screen because it was deemed to be point of fact rather than an issue for interpretation. Howard Webb of PGMOL stated after the match that VAR should not have intervened because there was no conclusive evidence that the ball was low enough on Ouattara’s arm to deem it a handball.

VAR was introduced in the English Premier League 2019 after years of pressure brought to bear on the game’s administrators by journalists, broadcasters and their stuffed-shirt presenters, including people like Alan Shearer and Gary Lineker. It should also be stated that it was introduced after being unanimously backed by every Premier League club at the time of the decision to introduce it in 2018. However, it would be pushing the very limits of credibility for anyone today to state that VAR has been a success: in fact it would be pushing the limits of credibility for anyone to state that it has even achieved what it was intended to achieve, which was to eradicate clear and obvious errors.

The vast majority of football’s laws are subjective – the law on what constitutes a foul describes what it calls ‘excessive force’, a term which can be interpreted in myriad ways by referees, players, fans and the media. The fact is that, with a rule book that says ‘excessive force’, anything can be a foul and nothing can be a foul at the same time, depending on the interpretation of the person seeing the incident. The idea that there can ever be clear and obvious errors on matter of subjectivity is plainly nonsense, yet here we are in 2025 with matters of subjectivity being interpreted and reinterpreted in a Portakabin by a referee whose definition of what is and isn’t a foul is likely to be different from that of the person designated to run the game.

In summary, the introduction of VAR has been an unmitigated disaster for modern football – it has created a two-tier game where decisions are challenged and overturned in the top-flight while the referee’s decisions are final everywhere else. Rather than eradicate clear and obvious errors, VAR has actually not only increased them, but shone an even harsher light on them, including the serious one which occurred in Madrid on 12th March 2025.

Abolition of the Away Goals Rule

In 1965 UEFA introduced the ‘away goals rule’ to its European competitions in order to at least to some degree mitigate against the considerable advantage that teams had when they were drawn in the first leg of ties. This rule remained unchanged and intact for over fifty-five years until UEFA determined that the rule should be abolished because, according to UEFA’s President Aleksander Čeferin:

“The impact of the rule now runs counter to its original purpose as, in fact, it now dissuades home teams – especially in first legs – from attacking, because they fear conceding a goal that would give their opponents a crucial advantage. There is also criticism of the unfairness, especially in extra time, of obliging the home team to score twice when the away team has scored.”

In 1979, Nottingham Forest were drawn to face Cologne in the European Cup and played their first leg at home. They drew with Cologne 3-3 at the City Ground, with Cologne’s three away goals giving them a significant advantage for the second leg at home. However, Nottingham Forest had to approach the match knowing that they had to go to Cologne and win the match outright, given that other than a win the only other result which would mean that Forest would win the tie would be a 4-4 draw. Forest won the match 1-0 in Cologne and went through to the next round and subsequently won the European Cup, beating Malmo in the final.

In 2019, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City faced off in their two-leg quarter-final tie. The first leg had finished with Tottenham securing a 1-0 win in a close match and with VAR making a controversial decision to award Manchester City a penalty for handball after a decision which took a considerable amount of time and with fans in the ground completely cast adrift as to what was going on (I know, I was there). The penalty was saved by Tottenham goalkeeper Hugo Lloris.

In the second leg, Manchester City, clearly under instructions from their manager, Pep Guardiola, to make the tie level as soon as possible, took an early lead through Raheem Sterling, however Tottenham rallied and took a 2-1 lead through two goals by Son Heung-min. Manchester City hit back and ended the half with a 3-2 lead with goals from Bernardo Silva and a second from Sterling.

The second half was arguably as chaotic as the first – on the hour Sergio Agüero put Manchester City into a 4-2 lead and 4-3 up on aggregate, but Fernando Llorente, on as a substitute, scored from a corner, making the tie 4-4 on aggregate but giving Tottenham the advantage on away goals. A VAR check for a possible handball by Llorente resulted in the referee Cüneyt Çakır not only allowing the goal to stand, but indicating that he wasn’t exactly sure why he’d been asked to check in the first place (the ball hit Llorente’s thigh before crossing the goal line). VAR would make one more intervention when Raheem Sterling, who believed that he had scored a fifth Manchester City goal, had his goal cancelled out for an offside in the build-up.

The ‘away goals rule’ added an extra dimension to European football ties that has been completely lost through its abolition: In fact when examining the match on 12th March between Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid, had the away goals rule still been in place then Atletico would have gone through at 90 minutes in the second leg by dint of that very rule. European football has been rendered less exciting and far more predictable because of the abolition of this rule.

Modern football, particularly top-flight football, is a far less compelling product than it was even five years ago: VAR has had a permanent and severely damaging effect on the game with it’s pernicious and hidden influence and the proliferation of serious and high-profile errors. In the case of European football, the abolition of the away goals rule has removed a layer of interest and excitement which the rule provided. That’s before we even consider the decision by UEFA to abandon the knock-out format of the European Cup in favour of the group stage format of the Champions’ League, only to ditch that in favour of the frankly ludicrous 36-team single table set-up for this season.

If one considers the erosion of the domestic top-flight game with the abolition of FA Cup replays and the lack of either competition or strength in depth in the English Premier League alongside the seemingly game-wide proliferation of players diving, fouls being given for innocuous challenges and what appears to be a FIFA and UEFA-driven plot to make football a non-contact sport, then for someone like me who has watched and enjoyed football since the late 1970, the game really has, irretrievably, gone.