VAR and drugs

Famous journalist Mykola Nesenuk shared his views on the VAR video assistance system for referees on his Facebook page.

Mykola Nesenuk

VAR and drugs

I will begin by stating that drugs have always existed! I know this from the books I read during my school years. Initially, there was \"The Tale of Hodja Nasreddin,\" where the characters casually smoked hashish, and no one was surprised by it. Then there was \"Taras Bulba,\" where the main character fell into the hands of enemies and perished while searching for a pipe with that very hashish. Because the Zaporizhian Cossacks couldn’t smoke anything else — South American tobacco was introduced to us a century and a half later.

Suddenly, a so-called “fight against drug addiction” began, for which numerous law enforcement units with powerful equipment and apparatus were created (first abroad and then in our country), which cost the budget a considerable sum. As a result, the number of drug addicts keeps increasing, and the earnings of drug dealers along with those who supposedly “fight” against them grow higher and higher. Consequently, in some countries, hashish has been allowed again, and the world did not collapse afterward. Only the income of drug dealers decreased, and fewer were those who had to “fight” them.

The same goes for football. For one hundred and fifty years, the enforcement of the rules by players was monitored by one person with a whistle and two assistants with flags. Suddenly, that became insufficient. After the introduction of VAR (Video Assistant Referee), the enforcement of football rules is now overseen by several dozen state-of-the-art video cameras with an extremely expensive mobile studio, which is serviced by dozens of people for considerable money.

Have there been fewer scandals regarding referee mistakes since then? Not at all! Mistakes still exist, but they cost much more. For those who need these mistakes and for those who seemingly strive to avoid them. Currently, this fight for the \"purity of football\" costs hundreds of times more than the previous services of one person with a whistle and two with flags. As a result, in some countries, they have already given up on the services of that VAR. And the world did not collapse afterward. Only the incomes of dishonest referees and those who “fought” against them fell.

Mykola NESENYUK