When the referee is afraid to 'collision' with VAR

The real value of VAR

In the first half of the match, VAR was involved in a situation on the field - Paulo Pinto's tackle in the 10th minute, a yellow card was drawn before the reaction of Viettel players. VAR immediately intervened and after reviewing the video from technical angles, VAR referee Mai Xuan Hung agreed with referee Ngo Duy Lan's decision. The match was only paused for a few dozen seconds after a quick exchange between the parties involved.

In the second half, the highlight was the situation that led to Hoang Duc's second goal after Essam's pass. Hoang Duc moved, received the ball and scored in a sensitive position, bordering offside or not. And before passing the ball to Hoang Duc, Essam also had a strong dispute with his opponent.

The referee team directly in charge of the match recognized Viettel's goal and immediately VAR also stepped in. Essam's collision, Hoang Duc's starting position when the ball left Essam's foot was also checked. In this sensitive situation, referee Ngo Duy Lan and assistant number 1 Nguyen Trung Hau did a great job in making a quick and accurate decision: recognizing Hoang Duc's valid goal. The VAR team also played a role in supporting the check of the ball in a more meticulous, detailed and accurate way. This was truly an important decision.

If there was no VAR and the referee team caught Hoang Duc's offside wrong, the goal would not have been recognized, the score would still be 1-0, then the match could have had different developments.

But…

It is worth noting that in the situation leading to Hoang Duc's goal, the VAR team had to check for more than 5 minutes before making the final decision. This is rare in top matches in Europe and the world . The Thai League professional football league also rarely has similar cases. The important thing is that just observing with the naked eye through the slow-motion cameras of the television is enough to conclude that it was a valid goal. The camera close to the end of the field showed that Essam did not commit a foul and the offside camera in the A stands with the exact stopping points when the ball left the Egyptian striker's foot, also easily gave us the conclusion that Hoang Duc was not in an offside position. But it is not clear why the machine operating in the VAR car took 5 minutes and 5 seconds to make the final decision. The reason is that the technology of measuring the field surface of the technology does not match the actual image of the television.

It was the VAR's somewhat cumbersome handling that interrupted the match for too long, the players waited in exhaustion. Typically, Hoang Duc had to constantly stand up and sit down to stretch and relax, and when the goal was recognized, his emotions had somewhat cooled. The rest of the players also lost the high-intensity rhythm of the match, and the audience in the stadium or the audience watching on television also somewhat lost their excitement.

In the situation where Viettel was awarded a penalty in extra time, referee Ngo Duy Lan, from a favorable viewing angle, did not think it was a foul. However, with the support and advice of the VAR team, the match manager reviewed the video and changed his decision. It was a penalty for Viettel and the final 4-0 victory went to the home team. It was a situation that did not affect the outcome of the match much, but there were some concerns about the referee team's ability and the coordination between them and the VAR team. More importantly, through the images and camera angles on television, many people thought it was not a penalty. Slow-motion angles showed that Janclesio of the Ha Tinh team was the one who poked the tip of his shoe to change the direction of the ball before making physical contact with Viettel striker Danh Trung. Is there a problem with the referee's ability to read and analyze situations or was the referee really afraid of "collision" with VAR on the day of its launch?

When asked about concerns about the implementation of VAR in the V-League, the Head of the VFF Referee Committee, Mr. Dang Thanh Ha, mentioned the human factor. "The way the machine operates has a FIFA training process, the more you study and do, the more you will get used to it. The most difficult thing is reading and analyzing images, and assessing situations, which is still the sole domain of the referees."

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