Its just such utter nonsense that 'fans and pundits criticising referees' is the reason why the standard is so shit now and why VAR is being used.
VAR is here because the times change. Every other sport uses technology, football has tried to catch up and there are certain groups who have seen this as a criticism rather than a tool to actually help them and make their job easier. I watched a Leicester Tigers/Wasps game the other weekend and technology was used perfectly. The ref was mic'd, the person in control of the technology was mic'd, we could hear the conversation between them, understand the decision making process as we could see the images on the screen and the correct decision was reached every time. It didnt disrupt any sort of flow to the game. I watched the India/England game and again, same thing. Except there, the 3rd umpire was fucking shit. Nothing to do with the tech. He didnt justify his decisions and reached his decisions too quickly. The reason VAR is a shambles is solely because of the officials. The technology itself is pretty basic stuff.
In football there is this bizarre idea that referees need protecting. They dont. The problem, and I can only speak for this countries referees in the PL, is there is an astounding arrogance. They dont have conversations with players, and if players try to have conversations with them about decisions they are shooed away in a 'you may not converse with me' manner. You watch someone like Mike Dean or Kevin Friend and the over-riding feeling is 'I'm king here, I'm the most important man on this pitch, you're not allowed to question me and if you do I'll book you'. They come across like they are untouchable. And that absolutely connects with the lack of accountability they face. They make a mistake, nothing happens. They're back refereeing next weekend. Nothing happens, nothing changes. There is absolutely no drive to improve the standard. There's a constant desire to blame someone else, and at the moment its VAR. Blame the technology. Blame the rules. They've made it too hard for us, let us just referee again to our usual shit standard.
I don´t think it is an either/or scenario.
I wasn´t watching football in the 60s, 70s and 80s, so I don´t know how the standard of refereeing differed. What I do know is that was a time before most games were televised, and importantly, before every televised decision could be watched from multiple angles in super slow motion.
Now you can make every single decision look debatable. And that is what we have seen the last 30 years. Constant debates on refereeing, when I can´t help but think in years gone by some of these decisions would not have even warranted a single post-match comment, except from perhaps a few people in the stadium close enough to see it properly, whereas for the last 30 years it has been some game changing moment in which it is not just
a talking point, but
the talking point.
Now perhaps the standards of refereeing have dipped. I am not in argument that what we are currently witnessing is a massive dip in refereeing standards. But is it any surprise that such an Old Boys, us-against-the-world culture has developed amongst referees (which you and others have convincingly argued has led to the dip in standards) in the face of such unrelenting scrutiny for every match and every decision, even in matches where referees have had generally good performances barring perhaps one incorrect decision, which has suddenly been plastered all over the TV, newspapers and internet?
Other sports use technology, sure. But other sports have rule books twice the size of that in football. In cricket, and indeed any bat-and-ball sport, there is very clear lines that can and can´t be crossed. And they are in their very nature stop and start sports. Even rugby and American Football, while there remains an element of subjectivity, they are constantly chopping and changing rules (to an extent that is increasingly heavily criticised by fans and pundits, and in the case of American football, has actually led to break away leagues seeking a more back-to-basics approach), and the nature of the sport still allows for those stop-and-start periods for these decisions to be made.
The beauty of football has always been its perfect imperfection. It is also the most free flowing sport out there except perhaps basketball. It is the reason it is far and away the most popular sport on earth, with no other sport coming even remotely close. In fact there is parts of the world in which footballing cultures have sprung about on the basis that referees can and should be gamed (as much as we hate it here). Footballs imperfections allow that kind of adaptability. Why do we even need to try and imitate other far less popular and far less successful sports, that most people consider more boring to watch - especially at the expense of these things that make this sport popular in the first place?
All that said, it has already happened and there is probably no going back. But I think it is absolutely the case that fans, pundits and the media have helped to dig their own grave. For me growing up there was never any football chat more boring, and yet more popular, then people moaning about referees. And now this.