Soccer 2017-2018

Quineloe said:

Soviet doping apparently wore off today.

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Actually they were a man down and still closing down Uruguay like mad up until the end. I wouldn't be surprised if they actually increased their sprint stats since they were a man down. Some UK paper, Independent?, is claiming that FIFA has had evidence for 18 months now of Russian doping. Either way they clearly are doping and it will be amazing if it's claimed they passed their drug tests during the tournament.

Szlia said:

The problem with the VAR is that while it corrects some things that would have been unfair, it also creates additional judgement calls that also can be unfair. This Iran vs Portugal match will be a point of reference as to why that stuff will be gone or severely changed. You had everything in it: the good case with the missed foul on Ronaldo, the bad case with an unintentional handball that had basically zero effect on play that somehow turned into a penalty (and on top of that play was stopped in total confusion for 3 min while the VAR was reviewing the images) and the outrageously absurd with the review of the altercation involving Ronaldo. It's absurd because half the people who see it say it's a foul another half say it's not, so already it's something the VAR should not touch, then, if it's a foul it's a red and if it's not it's nothing, but the ref' went for a diplomatic yellow (I guess you have to do what you have to do to not get lynched, but his World Cup is over).

On the up side, as far as dramaturgy go, these two matches playing simultaneously was some serious nail biting stuff!

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The handball review for Iran didn't take 3 minutes and it was clear as day why they were reviewing. The UK press is up in arms about it, at least those that already didn't want VAR, which I think is ridiculous in that it was a handball. The rules are the issue in that it's always up to the ref on the field to decided whether it was intentional or not. In LFC's games vs. Roma the handball's that went against us were different how? It's always going to be a grey area and always has been VAR or no VAR. The biggest thing for me so far is that when VAR asks the on field referee to review it himself then I think in every instance the on field ref has agreed. Can anybody remember one instance where they did not? The ref has on one wrist the buzzer for the goal decision system, on the other wrist he should have a VAR buzzer and then the VAR ref announces the call in the stadium and that's it. I do agree on the Ronaldo call in that it shouldn't be a VAR issue if the ref wasn't going to card him in the first place. VAR is just supposed to be used to determine if a yellow was worthy of a red as well.

Merrith said:

Hoping for a good game at least. Spain/Russia might be interesting too.

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Odds are it will be a terrible game in that both want to counter attack, aren't very mobile and have no issue with random acts of violence. Will need an early goal to change it up in my mind. Spain should sleepwalk through Russia assuming they don't dope even more.

Merrith said:

The ref should decide if its intentional or not, absolutely agree. I thought it was borderline. Although whatever hand balls existed/didn't exist or got called/didn't get called in a Liverpool game shouldn't matter at all as far as deciding the one in a Portugal/Iran game.

It is a grey area though, although I prefer more when it's a clear handball to award a penalty, especially in stoppage time of a 1-0 match. Is what it is, was a terrific penalty taken fwiw.

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The ref did decide though. People keep getting VAR confused in that they don't call anything, they just alert the ref to what they feel is an error and it's up to the ref to then decide. The hope would be as ref's get better with VAR that they'll be more confident in their calls and not just go with whatever VAR says which seems to be happening now.

My LFC example though is just to illustrate how ridiculous handball calls are. For every Suarez handball for Uruguay I can show you a bunch of other instances that are almost the same but not called. VAR or no VAR you're at the mercy of whatever the ref you have that day is and what they view as a hand ball from minute to minute.

dizzie said:

Did Ronaldo get like a gallon of botox injected in his face or something? Fucker looks weird as hell to me..His face is totally unnatural..

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It’s his Adam’s apple, it protrudes way out from his neck and makes him look super weird.

Szlia said:

The problem with the dubious VAR calls is that, before it, the ref' always had plausible deniability / benefit of the doubt. You could always wonder if maybe from his view point / at normal speed / with sound / with natural stereoscopic vision the potential foul looked worse / better than how it looks with TV replays. With VAR, the ref' takes his decision based on the exact same thing that we see (at times there are angles that were not shown in the broadcast, but usually they put an over the shoulder shot that allows us to see the VAR's screen while the ref' is looking at it) so the plausible deniability / benefit of the doubt is gone. When a call is totally stupid, like today's penalty against Portugal, it's painfully obvious for just about everyone that it is.

To paraphrase a comment I saw on a french blog: With or without VAR, a bad ref' is a bad ref'.

That being said, I wonder if the refs have been trained properly. And I mean, not trained properly to understand the VAR process, but trained to make calls based on slowed down video footage. That's a pretty different beast than making calls in real time.

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Couple of things here:
1. The on field ref is not shown slow motion replays, just different angles at game speed. Again the on field ref has final say.
2. They’re using 13 refs that received extra training solely for VAR. The on field refs did receive some extra training but I doubt it’s anywhere near what the 13 did. That’s why I thought VAR would be a disaster in that the majority of on field refs have never used it.

I wholeheartedly agree VAR cannot fix a bad ref and why some on the LFC forum don’t want it in the EPL as they’re really bad. The head of English officials claims they get 99% of calls correct which is hilarious. Watch VAR save England’s ass in a game though and how they eat their words, would be delicious.