There used to be a simple moment in football: When your own team had been knocked out, you could lean back, watch the match, and simply enjoy the game. Neutral, curious, open. The better side should win. Full stop.
That moment has disappeared. Not because of one mistake, but because of a slow erosion of trust. The technology that was meant to make football fairer has pushed itself into the center of the sport.
The scenes from last night are emblematic. A ball visibly touches the spider‑cam, changes its trajectory, yet VAR does not intervene. The ball‑tracking system reports no contact. A technical failure in a World Cup quarterfinal? A few matches earlier, the opposite: a supposed ball contact leads to Croatia’s goal being disallowed, even though the cameras show nothing.
And then the yellow‑red card for Embolo. Technically correct, because the wrong player had been booked earlier. But where was the sense of proportion? Where the intuition? Especially when we remember that in the opening match VAR did not intervene when Messi stayed on the pitch after a foul that could easily have been red.
A pattern emerges: Sometimes VAR does not intervene when it should. Sometimes it intervenes when it shouldn’t. Sometimes it intervenes without any human intuition at all.
The game loses its inner logic and with it, its credibility.
What remains is resignation. “Referee’s decision,” people say. You have to accept it. But the old saying that tight matches are decided by the form of the day suddenly takes on a new meaning. Not the form of the players but the form of VAR.
I don’t know about you, but at the moment, watching football simply isn’t fun anymore.
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I’m Bernd Scharbert, and I write about experiences from football that translate into leadership and business life.
