Why has the Var stopped working? It is not just an Inter problem (even if Inter live it more decisively on their skin, unfortunately), but a problem of the whole league and of our football. There is a huge difference between the use of technology when it was introduced and its sporadic use today. Today the Var no longer turns on or does so in rare cases. The justifications don’t hold up. It is not the truth, what they try to tell us.
The real problem is that the referee class is afraid to use the Var. The Var is there to testify that they are anything but infallible, that they make mistakes and that their mistakes affect more or less important games. They condition the championship. Their mistakes end up on the pages of the newspapers, they are analyzed and reanalyzed in the television slow motion. A tape that rewinds inexorably. Referees are targeted, they become protagonists. And we know that the Hague does not digest too much noise. It is a historical question. But it is also and above all a matter of career. The referee is a profession with unsafe horizons. At certain levels, being there and directing important games is a gamble. The conquest of a perennially poised balance. Without guarantees. With a future that can be compromised at any moment. From one mistake to another.
Claudio Gavillucci, former referee, explains it perfectly in his book. Gavillucci receives a letter of recall from Rizzoli which highlights how the use of the Var affects the evaluation of performance. In the letter Rizzoli speaks of an effective intervention by the Var, which corrects the initial decisions of the former whistle. And he concludes by trusting that “he will immediately return to the standards suited to the category and his experience”. No, if the Var intervenes, the referee who made a mistake is not happy at all. Nor are the leaders of The Hague. Everything has a consequence.
“It is a correction that tastes of defeat”, writes Gavillucci. “Admitting that you have caught a crab and paying for it on your own skin is like admitting that restoring the truth of the camp is a dishonor and not a merit”. And then again: “Asking for the help of technology is still considered an error, the price of which is a variable decided by the observer who often has never used the Var and has never arbitrated in Serie A”. Simply put, referees must choose whether to save their careers or acknowledge the mistake. What could possibly go wrong in such a structured system?
–
