Tell me honestly, did you think VAR would save our football? Well, football in general. A series of recent events suggests that a secret room with a group of monitors is not always the panacea for all legal problems. But the situation that happened the day before in Kazan showed that some of our referees learned not only to use the services of VAR, but also to somehow manipulate it.
We propose to consider the filigree actions of the referee Yevgeny Kukulyak at the Ak Bars Arena, where Rubin, who returned to the elite, hosted Spartak Moscow.
The rojiblancos achieved a confident victory, so the degree of indignation from the fans calmed down a bit, but the situation itself seems like a work option to avoid communicating with teammates on the monitors. At the end of the first half, with the score 1:0 in favor of the guests, Kukulyak made such a speech that he was taken aback by the crowded stadium, the fans in front of the TVs and, there is such an assumption, Evgeny’s colleagues watching. the game from dozens of monitors.
Ruslan Litvinov, blocking the advance of Marat Apshatsev, made a tackle into his penalty area, after which the Rubin player collapsed on the grass. The referee’s whistle blew, which recorded a violation of the rules by the Spartak player. At the same time, almost all one-plays showed that the defender touched the ball. And that there was no violation of the rules on his part in principle. Not all of us have been taught judicial matters, but we are able to see what happens before our eyes.
Photo source: FC Rubin
And then Kukulyak managed to surprise again. He conceded the goal for Spartak…from a free kick. And this is at the moment when a replay was played on the screens, in which there is obviously no foul and a fall, in the penalty area. It is difficult to grasp any logic in the referee’s actions. But we will come back to this later. There was a direct free kick, a series of rebounds and the ball ended up in Maksimenko’s goal. And with the score 1:1, the teams went to rest. In the episode, when it was only necessary to allocate an exit in the direction of Rubin, we have an amazing mission.
Take care of your hands, as they say. In fact, we see two referee errors. And, rough. And if he had made at least one of them, there would have been no goal against Spartak in that episode. The entry was clean, which means there is simply nothing to penalize. But if he had signaled a penalty kick, colleagues from the “military” room immediately explained to Evgeny that the defender had made the cleanest tackle. And that is.
As a result, the referee abused the main assistant of his squad? Somewhere, refs are relying too heavily on these life-saving replays. For example, the assistant head referee made a mistake in the episode with the runaway pass and did not catch the offside line. He will run to the end, score a goal, and then the teammates in front of the monitors will tell you how it really went. And at this moment, the team and the fans rejoice, followed by a rush of adrenaline. You can imagine how a disallowed goal a couple of minutes after the event affects the psyche.
Photo source: FC Rubin
An ideal lineup for the judges. They did nothing wrong, they did everything right. On the one hand, in most moments the VAR copes with its duties. Yes almost always. But a similar effect is that the judges begin to lose their sense of responsibility. I did not run there, I did not look there. It’s okay, the colleagues will watch TV, soon. Excuse me, but what to do with the spirit of football in such fabulous settings? But what about respect for players who give their best on the pitch, who fight?
It is clear that the VAR was conceived to eliminate the grossest errors of the judges. In those cases where they are so obvious, and the referee is “hung”. Yes, and there is no need to repeat the “hand of God” and the same yawning of Tofik Bakhramov, who made England the world champion-66. Let everything be fair and according to the rules. The hope was that the judges would break free, make a decision with confidence, realizing that there is insurance.
P.S.
And a few more words about the main episode of the day on Saturday. Kukulyak invented a new genre that we have not yet found. Essentially, he removed the VAR from the episode. Think about it, he made two gross mistakes that were played on every screen, but he didn’t give his teammates a chance to ask him to watch the replays. This is something new in our Kingdom of football. It turns out that VAR can also be… fooled.
