Michail Antonio has claimed that VAR needs to go, after Luis Diaz’s controversial disallowed goal vs Tottenham.
The decision to wrongly chalk-off Diaz’s perfectly good goal for Liverpool has provoked reaction and debate across the football world.
Lending his name to that debate is West Ham United forward Antonio. Speaking on The Footballer’s Football Podcast yesterday, the 33-year-old became the first player to publicly call for the technology to be scrapped since Saturday’s incident.
“VAR should be binned,” Antonio said. “That’s my thoughts. It’s not the first time I’ve said it, it’s not going to be the last time I say it.
“VAR got brought in because of the debates going on after every game. Too many human errors were happening so we brought in technology so they wouldn’t be so many debates. But if you look at the stats, the debates are still going on.
“Now we have technology and there are still human errors. It’s got to the stage where you need to accept human errors are part of football and it made football better. People are losing their heads over it but end of the day referees are human and they can make mistakes.
“So people are trying to change it, but the changes are not making it any better. So you might as well bring it back.”
Antonio calls for VAR change
There aren’t many footballers who have the public platform that Antonio does, with his podcast. But nevertheless, it would be a surprise if he were the last to publicly convey this view.
If fans have become sick of not being able to celebrate a goal properly for fear of it being disallowed, then imagine how the players feel.
Plenty – like Diaz on Saturday – have had good goals taken away from them completely unjustly.
Of course, this is not a new thing in football. As Antonio mentions, goals have been chalked-off incorrectly throughout history. But at least in those days, they were mostly purely marginal wrong calls made in good faith.
With the technology in place, the threshold for error deemed acceptable to the public is much higher. If at all.
So, officials are inadvertently creating an even bigger rod for their backs when things inevitably go wrong.
Despite that, we can’t see Antonio’s calls being listened to here, it’s too entrenched now. Instead, the answer is surely to improve the technology, or those operating it.
