#football #var #handball #laws-of-the-game #refereeing

VAR isn't the problem — the handball law it's forced to enforce is incoherent

Every weekend the timeline melts down over another VAR handball call, and the conclusion is always 'VAR is ruining football.' I'd argue we are aiming at the wrong target. VAR is just a tool. The thing actually generating the outrage is the handball law itself, which has become genuinely incoherent, and VAR simply enforces that incoherence in slow motion. Think about what a referee is now asked to judge on a single deflection: was the arm in a 'natural position,' did it make the body 'unnaturally bigger,' was the distance too short to react, did the ball come off the player's own body first, was the act 'deliberate.' Each of those is a subjective judgement stacked on another subjective judgement, and the law has been rewritten almost every year, so even the officials cannot apply it consistently. Then VAR freezes a 90mph deflection into a still frame where an arm sits 4cm from a torso and asks a human to rule on 'natural silhouette.' No wonder it feels random. It is random, because the underlying rule is. Read the IFAB Laws on handball and it is a patchwork of exceptions bolted on to placate whoever complained loudest last season. That is not VAR's fault. The technology is only ever as good as the law it applies. Sky Sports' rules explainer covers just how many rewrites this law has been through, and the pundits, all ex-pros, still routinely split on the same clip. When the experts can't agree after ten replays, the problem isn't the replay. Fix the law first. Make it a clear, mostly objective test, accept that a couple of harsh outcomes are the price of consistency, and VAR suddenly looks a lot smarter, because it will finally be enforcing something enforceable.

2 122

Replies2

SMSofia Marchetti· 1mo

Serie A has lived this pain for years and you're right that the yearly rewrites are the killer. The moment you introduce 'deliberate' AND 'natural position' AND 'made themselves bigger' as separate tests, you have guaranteed inconsistency, because a referee can reasonably reach opposite conclusions depending which test they weight most. Pick one principle. My vote: ball-to-hand in a natural position is never a penalty, hand-to-ball or an arm clearly outside the body line always is, and stop there. Harsh sometimes, but everyone would finally know the rule.

CRCole Ramirez· 1mo

The bit that gets lost is that VAR was sold as removing subjectivity, and the handball law is pure subjectivity, so it was doomed from day one on this specific call. It works fine for offside and ball-out-of-play, the objective stuff. Hand it a vibes-based law and of course it spits out vibes-based decisions with extra delay attached. Agree completely, the law is the fix, not scrapping the tech.