Why VAR Continues to Divide Fans Across Leagues

Raheem Sterling wheeled away in celebration, arms aloft, injury time, convinced he had dumped Tottenham Hotspur out of the Champions League quarter-finals. Manchester City’s players rushed towards him, the Etihad erupted, and for a few glorious seconds, the tie felt over.

Then the referee pointed to his ear. VAR intervened. The goal was ruled out for offside, and Sterling’s moment evaporated. This was April 2019, four months before VAR was introduced to the Premier League. It was an early warning that football was about to change forever.

What followed has been chaos. VAR arrived in English football promising clarity and fairness, but it has delivered confusion and controversy in equal measure.

The 2020 goalline technology failure between Aston Villa and Sheffield United remains the most glaring example. Hawk-Eye failed to register a clear goal for Sheffield United at Villa Park, and the match finished 0-0 instead of 1-0. Villa stayed up that season by a single point at Bournemouth and Watford’s expense.

The ripple effect is staggering. Villa are now regulars in Europe, with research from Gambling.com, who compare sportsbook data and new online casino platforms, showing that Unai Emery’s side have 2/5 odds to finish in the Champions League this season.

Sheffield United and Watford ponder Championship mediocrity. One technological failure changed the trajectory of three clubs, and VAR has created a fault line that still divides leagues years later.

The question is whether the system can ever be fixed, or whether football has created a problem it cannot solve.

Looking further afield

VAR’s impact has not been confined to English football. Serie A, traditional and adored by football purists even if it is no longer the superpower it once was, has struggled to reconcile the technology with its identity.

While Italy dominated the 1990s and its supporters appreciate a slower, more tactically nuanced game these days, clubs like Inter, who have reached two of the last three Champions League finals, can still compete at the highest level.

The 2017-18 season saw VAR incorporated into Serie A, a move that divided opinions among supporters and significantly affected the flow of matches. Despite its advantages in correcting clear errors, VAR has faced criticism for disrupting the game’s rhythm.

Former Italian coach Fabio Capello has been vocal about this, arguing that VAR undermines the natural cadence of the sport.

La Liga has faced similar challenges. The Cádiz versus Elche match in January 2023 exposed the system’s fragility. Elche’s equaliser was allowed to stand despite a clear offside in the buildup, with VAR failing to intervene due to a communication error.

The result held, Cádiz lost two crucial points, and the league later admitted the mistake. That lapse ultimately shaped the relegation battle, demonstrating how VAR failures carry consequences far beyond individual matches.

Yet European competition feels different. Why is VAR so much cleaner in the Champions League than in domestic football?

Champions League nights: Where VAR works

In the Champions League, VAR feels calmer, cleaner and far less combustible because the entire system around it is built differently.

UEFA uses a smaller, elite pool of referees who work together far more consistently, so communication is sharper and trust is higher.

The pace of the competition also helps. Fewer matches, fewer broadcasters, fewer political pressures, and far less of the week-to-week noise that engulfs domestic leagues.

The contrast with domestic football is stark. In 2023, video evidence emerged of the Premier League VAR panel wrongly denying a Luis Díaz goal in a Liverpool match against Spurs that descended into chaos. The irony is brutal. These two clubs met in a Champions League final just years earlier, where a penalty was awarded in the first minute with far less controversy.

The same technology, applied by different people under different pressures, produced completely different outcomes.

This raises an uncomfortable question. Is VAR the problem, or is domestic refereeing the problem? The technology works when deployed by officials who understand it, trust it, and operate calmly. In the Premier League, those conditions rarely exist.

Referees are under constant scrutiny, pressured by broadcasters, managers, and supporters who demand perfection while accepting none of the nuance that comes with split-second decision-making. VAR was supposed to relieve that pressure. Instead, it’s amplified it.

Will anything change?

Domestic refereeing can absolutely improve, but it requires a shift in culture as much as a shift in process. The biggest gains will come from consistency.

Smaller, more stable referee teams who work together week after week, mirroring UEFA’s elite-pool model, would improve communication and decision-making

Leagues should publish VAR audio, explain controversial calls in real time, and hold referees accountable without undermining them. Mistakes will always happen. The question is whether institutions can admit them quickly enough to maintain credibility.

Will it get better for supporters? Slowly, yes. VAR is not going away, and the technology itself is not the problem. It is the human layer wrapped around it. As leagues refine protocols, reduce noise, and empower referees rather than overwhelm them, the system will feel less intrusive and more reliable.

The emotional rhythm of football may never return to the pre-VAR era. The spontaneity of celebration has been replaced by hesitation, that brief glance towards the referee before committing to joy. But the game can settle into something more stable, predictable and fair. The chaos is not permanent. It is just the growing pains of a sport still learning how to live with its own invention.

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