VAR BLAH BLEEP VAR

Pandora’s Box of Tricks Strikes

Ladies & Gentlemen of the VAR Jury 

I present hallucination number 1

Even before a ball was kicked at the Azteca back on June 11^th. In fact even before FIFA’s Midas Master stepped foot on North American soil early last December I tagged this particular Mondial… An Unusual World Cup. 

3 nations hosting, time zones, altitude, 48 nations participating, twice as many knock out round matches. Yes, more than the last two World Cups combined. FIFA’s showpiece event has more participants than the 1^st three World Cups combined. Some flex that Johnny. 

Now add in last December 5th’s Draw, which came resplendent with a Saturday Night Live Cameo. We should have expected it. The venue after all was the magnificent John F Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts. In Washington no less. 

Start as you mean to go unusually on. Hey Johnny

Over the past 27 days we have witnessed more unusual events occur than in all previous World Cups before. And this is the 23^rd alliteration of this global tournament 

Or is it an extended hallucination we’re all living through. Some of which have been such a beautiful trip. Man.

Yesterday’s overruling of a legitimate 2^nd Egyptian goal has to go down as a medically accepted hallucination.

As UK ITV’s top talent and host Steve Ryder referenced postgame to his three dynamite load analysts… Roy ‘you looking at me son’ Keane, Neville Neville’s son ‘Garry Lad’ plus Ian ‘Wrighty’ Wright - this VAR intervention went so far back the next one could go back to the previous World Cup Qatar 2022. 

Who won then?

I fell off my chair, well I would of if I was sat on one. Which I eventually did as my torso was so bent out of shape due to the cackling and laughter that followed. 

Ladies & Gentlemen of the VAR Jury 

I present hallucination number 2

Now as anyone knows who knows me or has listened to any edition of my TSN690 soccer show oranges@halftime - for almost a decade now I have despised VAR since even before a ball was kicked on a VAR loaded football pitch. 

Football’s Pandora’s Box moment I dubbed it live on-air. People sneered at me. Football people mainly. Especially when guesting on the show and bringing up the very worst 4 letter, 3 letter acronym in all of world sport. 

I would have branded it, if asked, FUCK [Football Under Clinical Kryptonite].

VAR goes back to the IFAB approving its competitive introduction in time for the 2019/2020 Club Season. It had been trialled in non-competitive environments for close to a decade previously.  

The IFAB is football’s global governing rules body, the setter of all. By its full name the International Football Association Board. They are the mob who control the football on the pitch. FIFA are the money collectors and administrators off the World Cup pitch. Plus all other FIFA sanctioned events.

A duopoly if you like. And wouldn’t you just know it the beautiful game, joga bonito itself Pelé, the world’s game is controlled out of two Zurich based bunkers.

Since VAR is now traveling through time zones Frank Lampard has a legitimate, and well merited claim that the incident which actually lit the VAR fuse back at South Africa 2010 when ‘he scored England’s equaliser’ in the Round of 16 vs those pesky Germans.

Everyone in the 60,000 plus crowd saw Lampard’s rocket which came within a Manuel Neur smirk of actually feeling the back of the net after nearly breaking the crossbar. 

Everyone that is but the officials. It was gloriously sunny that South African afternoon, they must have forgotten to have taken their shades. All of them. 

Was Rayban one of the FIFA Partners at South Africa 2010?

And before any of you Albeceleste obsessed come at me ici – do kindly arm yourself with reasoning why one of Messiah Messi’s goals vs Austria in their group stage encounter was not disallowed when Maccy Mac Allistair threw that Boston Garden like hip check -- the likes of Dana Chara could only dream off - on his Austrian opponent around the halfway line. A hip check that began a sequence of play leading to yet another controversial goal for ‘8 penalties in the last 12 World Cup matches Argentina’

Blow me down with one of your feather duster’s Albeceleste Boyz n Girlz but please do remind me again of the specific location of what would become the football crime scene of that VAR intervention on the land of the Pharoh’s?

Now ask yourselves if the identities of the victim and the victorious were reversed in that rather tasty “Treat32” encounter what would have occurred? 

Oh, it’s already happened. Not two weeks ago. Different World Cup pitch that’s all. 

What would that football genius and maverick Jules Rimet, the inventor of the World Cup, and in his glorious football name the actual original trophy was named for, be thinking right now?

A moral man, with a moral code.

The Jules Rimet Trophy is no more. M. Rimet mandated that if a nation won it three times they get to keep it forever more. Which Brazil did after their third and most imperious triumph at that mesmerising MEXICO1970 Tournament.

The Jules Rimet Trophy is no more. The beautiful game is no more. 

Game’s Gone Gianni Geezer

Cheers

@NoelPButler etc…