Will VAR threaten to ruin the European Championship?

It’s no secret that VAR has a highly controversial reputation. Since its inception, the Premier League has seen more penalties awarded than ever before. The reason for this is that with VAR, play is stopped and scrutinized under technology, something that simply didn’t happen before. Not only this but it’s not just penalties either. A number of controversial decisions have been awarded when it comes to red cards and even the offside rule isn’t safe anymore. On a few occasions, the VAR team has even come out and said they’ve got it wrong when clear goals have been wrongly disallowed. In short, VAR has arguably made an inconsistent game, even more inconsistent. As a football fan, at times this is truly infuriating. So, what does this mean for the upcoming European Championships? Well, firstly it’s not actually the first-ever global competition to feature VAR technology. Going back to 2018, that privilege was awarded to the Russian World Cup which introduced the technology. Having said this, back then VAR was far more primitive and was mostly used for goal-line technology. Here, the technology would shoot information to the referee’s watch and gives instant updates. However, this was a far cry from the intrusive VAR that we have seen over the past couple of seasons. With this in mind, fans can expect a different kind of European Championships from the ones of the past. Most importantly will be the decisions…and you can guarantee there will be a couple of big moments because of this. As a general rule, usually VAR favors the bigger teams too, so the likes of France, Germany, Italy, England, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands may all benefit from its decisions. This is not fair, but then again football rarely is. As seen by the sheer number of penalties Manchester United have been awarded since VAR’s inception, it does seem to help the players with bigger status. On the one hand, fans will be quick to defend this, giving the argument that this is natural as the better teams will create more chances and defend better. However, for those looking at the game from a neutral perspective, this isn’t always the case. Too often, it seems there are double standards and smaller sides are left in trouble as a result. Because of the invisible nature of the VAR officials, there is also a severe lack of accountability too which doesn’t help football progress as a culture. This doesn’t mean that the Euros will be rubbish, but it does mean that some of the gloss maybe take off. With this said, if you’re a football fan, it’s time to buckle up and accept that VAR is probably here to stay, and the ‘beautiful game’ may not be as beautiful as it once was as a result.