The legendary Brazilian playwright and sportswriter Nelson Rodrigues was not impressed with the advent of televised matches. “If the videotape shows it’s a penalty then all the worse for the videotape,” he once famously fumed. “The videotape is stupid.”
One can only imagine what he would have made of VAR.
There has been speculation about widening the reach of video assistant referees in the years to come, but they seem to be causing enough strife in the Premier League as it is. Each weekend is invariably dominated by one divisive decision—or, more often, non-decision—after another, with managers, players and pundits getting caught up in the controversy.
Football fans have infamously fickle memories and those appealing for a world without VAR have undoubtedly forgotten about the cries of conspiracy which littered the game before the touchline monitors took over. Enter this harmless thought experiment.
Combing back through the season’s results and altering each outcome under the assumption that the on-pitch referee’s decision was always final creates a hypothetical world without VAR.
It’s an imperfect model: goals—disallowed or otherwise—change games, so It’s impossible to know quite how these matches would have played out if VAR had not intervened; we are also working under the assumption that every penalty which was overturned by VAR would have been scored.
But it serves as a rough indicator of how much impact Stockley Park has on the Premier League. Some clubs have certainly felt the pinch more than others.
