But the issue with football is that a huge amount of decisions are subjective. The example I always come back to is the Van Dijk goal at Wembley which, thankfully, didn’t cost us and actually set up an even better ending. But anyway, that decision was ‘subjective offside,’ the reason they give it is because Endo is blocking off the Chelsea centre half.
If you ask 100 people whether a goal should be disallowed for that you’ll get swathes of different responses. Even if you codify it as to what does and doesn’t constitute a ‘subjective offside’ offence, you will have differences of opinion over what does, or does not, constitute an offence. I was behind the goal when that went in and I can tell you now absolutely nobody anywhere near me, including the Chelsea players, showed any signs of thinking there was a hope of that getting disallowed, nobody ran to the referee, I actually cottoned onto it sooner than most around me as I saw, I think Chilwell, talking to the ref but that was only because he’d cottoned onto him having a conversation in his earpiece.
It's a bad example you've picked there though, or maybe it's a good example, because it shows that VAR isn't used PROPERLY according to the VAR-protocol, which is the official guideline by IFAB on how to use VAR. It says: "For subjective decisions, e.g. intensity of a foul challenge, interference at offside, handball considerations, an ‘on-field review’ (OFR) is appropriate". The Endo-"offside" is the textbook example for this. It's a subjective decision, whether Endo was actually interfering with play. According to the VAR-protocol, again those are the official IFAB guidelines for the use of VAR, subjective decisions should be made by the ref using an 'on-field review'. That never happened. It never happened for the Odegaard handball. It never happened for the Doku karate-kick. Instead the decision was made by the VAR, which should NOT happen.
So, it is 100 percent clear PGMOL aren't applying VAR in accordance with the VAR-protocol, and again: those are the OFFICIAL IFAB GUIDELINES on how to use VAR. Yet, that NEVER got mentioned in public discussion. It was about how you get 100 people to look at the situation and you get 99 different opinions. Get rid of VAR for all I care, but again you're getting rid of the symptom instead of looking at the root cause of this which is an organisation that doesn't apply the rules correctly and nobody seems to care about that.
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