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Has Video Refereeing Ruined The World Cup? (npr.org)
An anonymous reader shares a report: This is the first time FIFA, soccer's governing body, has allowed video replay to be used to make penalty calls in a World Cup. And while fans of basketball and American football are used to the referees stopping the game to consult video footage, soccer purists say it's ruining everything. The major complaint is that it's making the matches much longer than the typical 90-minute games. Martin Rogers, a sports columnist for USA Today, says Video Assistant Referee (or VAR) is "slow, clunky and unpredictable." Over the phone from Russia, where he's reporting on the World Cup, he jokes, "I remember back in the day, when if a game kicked off at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, you'd be all wrapped up by 4:45."
Rogers says this type of technology works well for American football and basketball. "When you look at the calls that are used for replay, in basketball for example, it's normally factual. It's based on, 'Did a player get a shot off before the clock expired?' It's easy. You know. It's black and white." But soccer, Rogers says, is different. He's referring to one of the most hated and beloved qualities of the game: the endless drama. It's a thespian sport.
Rogers says this type of technology works well for American football and basketball. "When you look at the calls that are used for replay, in basketball for example, it's normally factual. It's based on, 'Did a player get a shot off before the clock expired?' It's easy. You know. It's black and white." But soccer, Rogers says, is different. He's referring to one of the most hated and beloved qualities of the game: the endless drama. It's a thespian sport.
If a player is writing on the ground in pain, then for their own safety, they should not be allowed to return to the game at all.
Whether they can get up afterwards and say they can play immediately afterwards is not an issue - no players should be allowed to play with the possibility of an injury, imagined or otherwise.
Ryan Fenton
za dom spremni! we are going to take this shit home now that this game is based on actual skill and team work.
What is the problem with being able to review a decision so you make the right call?
I'm an American, so I couldn't possibly give two figs about soccer. But it's already ruining baseball, so yes, why not ruin your culotte tournament? May they have a video replay for every pathetic flop.
Whats ruined the world cup? A few things about FIFA soccer in general should have been coffin nails for the agency..
1. fixed matches and corruption. FIFA has a long, long history of total corruption as it pertains to the sport. Despots have chaired it with impunity and most of the executives could easily mistake a trombone for a four star hotel.
2. Racism. turning the live coverage black and white is a novel idea to give viewers at home a sense of when racism is taking place in stadiums, but its a hollow gesture designed to punish the many for the actions of the few. Something I might add which is illegal under the Geneva conventions. Instead of cleaning up racist actors and venues, FIFA has decided the saturation knob is good enough.
3. Cowards.: plain and simple. Mediocre "superstar" players paid millions that feign injury and agony at the slightest encounter with even a slightly more qualified opponent. Youre representing an entire country. Act like it.
4. Riots.: Riots and rioters are something FIFA has decided must remain a cost socialized to the general public. Instead of stripping teams of wins or removing them from future play, FIFA stares at its collective shoes and does nothing. Disclosure: My Citroen burned like a fucking candle during the Glasgow riots, so i might not be impartial to this point.
Good people go to bed earlier.
No. It made it tons better.
Soccer is already a long and laborious sport to watch.
Overtime?
Yea, have fun with that, I'll see ya next week.
The soccer dinosaurs doing everything they can to prevent progress. Max Planck claimed that science progresses one funeral at a time. That's probably true of sports as well. Well, at least the repulsive, corrupt Blatter is largely out of the picture.
A big part of soccer is that there should be minimal interruptions so that the team that is well coordinated with the most fit players are going to have an advantage. The extra time needed to review calls gives the players a chance for a breather as well as consult/plan going forwards. This means that you will get a different game than if there wasn't video refereeing.
Other games (baseball, football, hockey) that use video refereeing tend to have longer and more natural breaks so the flow of the game isn't as affected as soccer.
I don't know if video refereeing "ruins" the game (I'm not enough of a fan to have a strong opinion) but I'm sure purists would.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Why are you asking us this? We are nerds, not sport nerds.
So they are focusing on Video Play Recording instead of Players Faking Injuries for the sake of what? What's even the point? Why do people let it happen? How Soft are these players? If anything Video Play Recording should be used to Shame those Faking Injuries.
> Disclosure: My Citroen burned like a fucking candle
Maybe someone was trying to keep the bugs away and got.confused.
https://www.homedepot.com/b/Ou...
Not sure this is /. material, but I'll bite, as I occasionally watch football (sic), mostly national games like in the world cup or big CL games etc.
In any case, I thought that VAR should have come much sooner, as the unavailability of a replay is the excuse referees always had for bad result-altering decisions. In fact, on this world cup I saw that the problem was the opposite: currently the referree has to ASK for VAR. In one match for example, Sweden's attacker Berg should have won a penalty, but the referree was adamant it was not end did not ask for VAR. Well, he was wrong, and the procedure should have been such that the VAR room people should have told him themselves "eh, you know, don't be so sure about that". I am not a Sweeden fan, just one occasion I remember, there were a few more but not many. I'd also want video review to punish players who flop. Because maybe then they would stop flopping, which would lead to a much better game (they often stop trying to score a goal just to fake a foul/penalty).
Overall VAR helped deliver some tough calls and lead to a much more fair sport and it added a couple of minutes to the duration of each match, which is a completely idiotic reason to complain about. And there are many black/white calls in football (ball passing lines, offsides etc) and hopefully those will be the first to be handed off to some good AI/Machine Vision system to call, but harder things like penalty calls will take more time for that and VAR is not a perfect, but the best solution so far.
Why am I debating VAR on /. again? :)
PS calling it "soccer" means you are not in touch with the football world, as there is only one country that calls it that way (retaining the name "football" for a game played mostly by holding and throwing the ball), and they weren't even in the world cup. Yeah, OK, you might say it is not fair since he is an American reporter so what can he do, but then think about that he reports on the world cup and is bothered by the fact that the games don't finish in 1h 45m - Newsflash: THEY NEVER DID, we always had an unpredictable number of extra minutes which was never less than about 3-4 per game and sometimes went to over 10, way beyond the time VAR took (for most games it was like a minute).
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
what about an real clock not this stoppage time
VAR should be used for handing out asynchronous yellow and red cards for horrific flopping.
WTF a reporter from USA Today has to say about soccer ?
The sport is an exercise in humanity, fallibility in anyone on the field is a part of it.
It is not the point to eradicate judgement failures and create the "perfect" game. The Referees can have good or bad games, it's part of the sport because they are participants too, we should not relegate them to being robots or defer to an off-pitch panel of judges. It's the officials' job to be engaged on the field and not simply wait for an outcry and rush to a monitor to see what happened.
Nullius in verba
Forget the drama, the bad calls, the blatant cheating and the myopic officials; the singular reason for VAR is the enormous money involved with the action (betting periods). US people aren't used to having bookies every 10 shops, in fact it's generally illegal; unlike the rest of the planet. Betting is no longer walking into a seedy shop unit with smelly old men watching horses - it's 99% online, instant and advertised on shirts, around the ground and in every single fscking TV break. And it's global with everything you can think of being set up as a bet.
Global betting corps now control big-time Association Football, and have far more influence than FIFA, UEFA "official" sponsors.
I have always said that they need to award yellow cards after the match for obvious dives and theatrics. If players know that they can't just carry on and try to convince the ref right then, but that their actions will be reviewed to see if they are false, it would stop a lot of the rolling around and hamming it up. There are too many no touch fouls where a player might get hit on the chin but grabs his forehead like his head is broken, or a player leaps into the air and rolls around like he has severed his leg when he wasn't even touched.
The imperfection of officiating has always been a part of sports and the shift to video replay of almost every call has made the games barely watchable. Another factor is removing weather, sun, wind as game influencing factors by moving outdoor games inside. If the game was originally designed to be played outside it should still be played outside. Couple all of this with weird (ie non natural surfaces) and you end up with games that barely resemble what they looked like 50 years ago. Baseball has probably done the best job of not straying too far afield other than the few teams that play in domes (and shouldnâ(TM)t.) I would love to see baseball, football, soccer, tennis and hockey all stay outdoors where they belong.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
What is ruining the sport is calling it soccer instead of football. World Cup?? Of what??
Soccer (football) is a decent sport. However, it would be MUCH improved if the lame offside rule were removed. This way an attacker can be waiting down towards the goal, receive a kick and score. Also, there wouldn't be these stupid calls where the person was offside by six inches and they take a free kick.
Still - planning on going to France for the Women's World Cup next year. At least they don't fall to the ground as much as the men.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
as in Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA).
1998: Man, sports officiating sucks. If only we could review video to make sure they get the calls on the field right.
2018: Man, these games are taking too long. If only we hadn't added video review...
The refs have to have "good enough" credibility, even if this will always be imperfect. Like it or not, fans in the stands and assistant coaches are looking at these replays on their phones, 15 seconds after the event. Those referees are being judged in a context that includes those video replays. They need to gain the advantages of this technology in some fashion. Whether what they are doing with VAR is the best way is open to debate. Doing nothing only erodes the credibility of the ref on the field and the FIFA officials running the show.
VAR is the wedge to get all the other annoying bits of US TV sports into soccer - especially ad breaks during play. Sigh.
How "much longer" does VAR make games? Maybe zero more minutes? VAR is hardly ever used in a game. If it is, it only takes 5 minutes to review something. How much time does Neymar's fake rolling around in the ground waste? How much time is wasted over guys arguing with the on field referree? How much time is wasted waiting for players to walk slowly off the field in order to waste time because they are ahead?
While things were in their infancy in the group stages, sure, there were some minor delays. But both players and officials have adapted for the knockouts. The assessments are fed to the referee in live time through his ear piece, and there has been far less objectionable contact in the box because players know it will be ferreted out. VAR has been great in its first introduction and managed to help referees get the right decision more consistently.
A big part of soccer is that there should be minimal interruptions so that the team that is well coordinated with the most fit players are going to have an advantage.
Soccer isn't a game of who can outrun the other guy. Sometimes conditioning plays a role but other factors generally determine the outcome - ball handling, teamwork, game tactics, etc. At the World Cup level there aren't going to be massive differences in conditioning. Everyone playing is a well conditioned professional.
The extra time needed to review calls gives the players a chance for a breather as well as consult/plan going forwards.
Fine but that's not adequate justification for permitting bad refereeing to occur and the conditions of the game remain the same for both teams. If you are the better team you should be able to win under a variety of circumstances. Sometimes games are going to be less fluid than at other times. Deal with it and find a way to win.
I don't know if video refereeing "ruins" the game (I'm not enough of a fan to have a strong opinion) but I'm sure purists would.
Generally anyone who could be described as a "purist" in regards to a game with arbitrary rules is going to hate anything that changes the game even when it demonstrably makes it better. I coach several teams and I run into this all the time. No video refereeing does not ruin the game as a general proposition in any sport.
The imperfection of officiating has always been a part of sports and the shift to video replay of almost every call has made the games barely watchable. Another factor is removing weather, sun, wind as game influencing factors by moving outdoor games inside. If the game was originally designed to be played outside it should still be played outside. Couple all of this with weird (ie non natural surfaces) and you end up with games that barely resemble what they looked like 50 years ago. Baseball has probably done the best job of not straying too far afield other than the few teams that play in domes (and shouldnâ(TM)t.) I would love to see baseball, football, soccer, tennis and hockey all stay outdoors where they belong.
Hockey was only played outdoors by kids. Since the early era of professional hockey, it was played in indoor arenas (the NHL is 50 years old). However, the goaltenders need to be forced to go back to skinnier pads. Between the goaltenders getting bigger and the large pads that they wear, the only spot left to score goals are the upper corners. Reducing the goalie pads would fix this.
It's soccer. It's a stupid sport.
Bad, inconsistent officiating has ruined the world cup not VAR.
Have a second clock for extra time that counts up and as the game goes on. So any Replay/Injury/Diving/Slow Substitution, all the ways that a team can currently use to run out a game once they have a crippling 1-0 lead, would automatically add up, negating any advantage gained.
If the teams just switch from the above to playing keep away in the backfield institute a over-and-back rule at the half-way line.
Calvin:Do you believe in the devil? Hobbes:I'm not sure man needs the help.
Other countries besides the US fefer to the game (where you kick the round ball) as soccer, to distinguish it from sports where you run with an oval ball.
For example in Australia they play 3 different types of football, not including soccer
Rugby Union, Rugby League, and Aussie Rules
In fact I was going to complain about the headline:
World Cup of what?
Since there are many sports that have a World Cup
Team sports have too much entropy for me to enjoy them. If I need a pseudorandom value I simply go and get it instantly from /dev/random. If your algorithm needs 90-odd minutes to generate a sample of two positive integers then perhaps you should consider choosing a different career path.
The purists complain about it because complaining about the refereeing is part of the post game rituals. If the refs were infallible and omniscient, it would remove this social aspect of the game. You can't go into work the next day and say something like, "did you see that ludicrous display last night?" and then spend the next couple of hours discussing the art of flopping and the fine subtleties of the rules if the refs don't mess up all the time.
My overall feeling in this cup is that VAR has been a well overdue positive innovation. I've seen some bad calls, included penalties, reversed because of VAR. There is nothing worst than losing a game on a bad penalty call by the ref. I am glad this is finally happening.
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
Outdoor playing only fucks up matches for certain sports.
Also, 50 years ago a football player had up to 5 seconds between receiving the ball and being attacked by an opponent, giving him plenty of time to figure out what the fuck should he do with it (keep, pass, advance, dribble, shoot, etc). today, that timeframe has reduced to an average of 0.5 seconds. That's what changed the game, not wherever the hell it's being played.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Then stop the fucking crying about every little thing and faking it most if it you pancy ass little dwerps.
In soccer cheating is some how accepted, what the hell does it teach our kids? If you can get a way with it, it's ok?
Automatic red cards for 10 games for faking!
This is the first time out with VAR. We should not expect them to have it perfect yet.
John_Chalisque
Video refereeing is making it worth watching.
What's the point of a sport where some random referee not calling a foul, or misscalling something leads to a game changing goal?
Then you get the constant replay on tv showing what really happened, so everyone knows who should have won, but the official title still goes to the losing team.
Yeah, fuck that.
A corrupt organization to the core. John Oliver even ran a segment on them. Soccer used to be a decent game. Now it's a tortured lost soul best left to children's playgrounds. At least children don't dive and even know how to be good sports.
Force all players (except goalie) to wear a uniform where their arms and hands are essentially 'inside' their shirt to prevent all the grabbing, pushing, etc. Yes, they'll need free hands/arms for throw in.
I used to play with my hands in my pockets to show the referee I wasn't grabbing or pushing and it eliminated most of the calls against me.
This would really help for set pieces where players are interfering with jumping for heading.
538 timed all stoppages, VAR hardly registers: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/world-cup-stoppage-time-is-wildly-inaccurate/
Really? You go to a 90 minute game, 120 minute if you're drawn in a knockout round, potentially longer if you're in penalties, and you're worried about the less than 1 minuted the VAR adds to the sport?
Want your minute back, penalise players who argue with the referrer, or worse, that despicable behavior of intimidating the ref in groups (Columbia looking at you!). Penalise players who roll around so much that the medical team can't even get to him, everyone knows who I'm talking about here.
VAR finally brings some much needed finality to a decision on a sport by a referee who spends more time running on the field than many players do and by his nature can't see it all, even with the several other assistant referees.
So how many interruptions did we have per game? LESS THAN ONE on average? And that "ruined" something for someone? I'm impressed.
Tone down the nonsense, please. WC was fun to watch and video referee's added a lot of fairness to the process.
Ice hockey has 4 officials on the ice at once, despite the playing surface being only 30% the size of a soccer field. They used to only have 3 (1 referee and 2 linesmen), but a 4th was added in the late 90s.
I don't see why soccer can't just add an extra referee, so that there are 2 sets of eyes on each play, and the ref isn't always so far behind the play.
Not that I mind VAR. Might as well get important calls right if you can.
Other things I wish they would take from hockey:
* More substitutions, more exciting.
* Reduce the number of players in overtime, so games are less likely to go to penalties.
* This thing called the stopwatch was invented. Maybe use it. You can even hook them up to these newfangled electronic scoreboard and clock things using the properties of electromagnetism.
* Zero-tolerance on holding. This was a problem in the "clutch and grab" 90s and 00s era of NHL hockey, so they cracked down on it.
* Short-term hockey-style penalties. You can trip a guy and all that happens is he gets the ball back?? Break a rule, go sit for 5 minutes by yourself and feel shame.
* Not even sure what to do about the card system, but there's got to be something better.
They should just play ice hockey instead, really :P
Comment removed based on user account deletion
100 years old you meant.
NHL Centennial
Fuck thd World Cup.
Fuck Putin and everyone licking his asshole.
Fuck SOCCER and fuck all you pussy euros or browns who's heros roll around and cry like babby with fake injury.
Soccer is for pussies. Always has been. Always will.
The majority of comments here reveal that US ignorance of football continues to be deep and broad. Rest of world is happy for things to remain that way, the US can hold its "World Series" of its cute local games while the rest of us enjoy a true global passion. Kudos also to Fox Sports for doing their bit to keep US viewers clueless
In childrens' games, it's known as "goal hanging" or "goal scrounging" and at any level beyond the very lowest, it ruins the flow of the game. The US equivalent might be, say, baseball batters hitting the ball off a tee : it completely changes the nature of the sporting contest.
No.
I've got a few beefs with the VAR regarding this last cup, but which fan doesn't at some point have issues with the ref? I still enjoyed watching.
..but "news for jocks" has ruined Slashdot.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
has he never watched the gae you call football or the snoozefest that is baseball?
Whoever had the bright idea of adding VAR in a World Cup hosted by Russia is to blame. I agree, like others here, bad calls where rightly fixed by VAR, but I think many of them were either bad on purpose just to showcase VAR, or could have been good calls in the first plkace if the referee consulted his on-field colleagues.
The real problem though, is I have noted VAR has been used to reverse good calls. How you say? Because the angles provided by VAR were intentionally vague to induce the ref in cancelling his initial call. Of note is a match where the Iran team called out the ref 5 times, prompting the VAR Room team to force a review 3 times, and only one of those did NOT benefit them, while the other 2 calls were bad calls because of VAR. I could really see some gambling house power in that specific game, which ended in a tie and should have ended in a 2-goal advantage for Portugal due to VAR, clearly winning a lot of cash for the house with the weird result. And then there's news of chinese activity with crypto-gambling in the WC, which makes referee payouts much more anonymous and schemable.
You are used to your version of futball, where none who are not 3meter by 2meter in size cannot play and most of the time everything is about violence. So most of you dont understand how a simple step on the ankle can result in such a reaction, but watch this :
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/01/11/249A4BC400000578-2905723-image-a-2_1421009826579.jpg
and compare to this
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/h4kSFg2ONso/maxresdefault.jpg
I believe most of you never seen the second image. People are envious, we won the world cup five times out of 21. We are the leaders of all time soccer. What I find strange is that USA Today is commenting about soccer ? WTF ? Its like Estadão from brazil talking about baseball... Pure arrogance...
I watched nearly every game since the 1/8th finals. ...
There was not a single one where checking a video caused a delay. I even think it was not even asked for a video referee during that period of the games
Rogers seems to have missed: since a few years we have "extension time", beyond the ordinary 45 minutes for a half, for time lost due to fouls and other breaks.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Ultimate a sport named in an attempt to create a competition with self refereeing. Ultimate Fun to play but not so popular to watch. The soccer replays help cut down on rampant cheating in soccer. It slows game / match down but the outcomes a little more bearable in terms of merit. I welcome the change and watched more as a result. The surveillance used to catch FIFA fraud also very welcome.
VAR calls happen seldomly, not enough IMO. Zero times during the last games...
As for the weather don’t forget teams change side after half time has played
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Video Refereeing is a great tool to make football a more fair game. The video system is the future of football. I am sure it will contribute to less cheating.
Matches have been robbed of the drama that causes them to be remembered for decades. Not sure whether that is a valid reason to get rid of VAR though... kind of like arguing against drug tests!
It's a thespian sport? NO. Get with the times and stop having shitty calls.
Refs are already getting worse across all sports with no accountability.