This year’s FIFA World Cup will be remembered as the most unpredictable in history… We literally had no idea—neither when a goal was actually a goal, nor when the referee was finally going to blow the final whistle!
Which, naturally, are the two most important things in a game the English invented X years ago to be played in two halves, only for the Americans, Y years later, to turn it into a sport played in four quarters and lasting an indefinite amount of time—essentially until the referee gets tired of jogging around and staring at that television sitting on a little stand next to the pitch. No atmosphere whatsoever.
Because the defining experience of this fresh, newly reinvented football lies precisely there—in watching slow-motion replays on TV.
Where referees usually see less than they did live.
And end up making even more ridiculous decisions than they made initially, despite the benefit of hindsight.
Meanwhile, instead of screaming, jumping, and celebrating goals in euphoria, the crowd first scratches its head, then bites its tongue, then nervously chews its nails while waiting to hear what the magical TV has to say—the one the referee can’t even be bothered to run to. No, he strolls over at a snail’s pace.
So the poor fans, already traumatized, frustrated, and blessed with lifelong nervous tics, either celebrate or mourn the replay like a reheated corpse!
Nothing could be more natural… except perhaps an igloo in Bermuda!
But that’s not all…
Because if the opposing team decides to object, the whole thing drags on for another ten minutes while every witness, victim, and prosecutor is “heard,” and footage from all 32 camera angles is reviewed.
Fluid, entertaining, and dynamic—about as much as the Serbian national football team’s style of play.
But who cares if football has lost its rhythm and natural flow when FIFA’s piggy bank is fuller than ever before?
Thanks precisely to the doubled advertising revenue, which has transformed the sport we once knew as football into something entirely different—a game that hasn’t even been given a proper name yet.
Allow me, therefore, to be its godfather and suggest the obvious:
VAR FOOTBALL!
And from now on, the trophies won by future Messis should absolutely be shaped like TV screens! Maybe with a few falling dollar bills visible on them.
Because that’s what it’s really all about—His Royal Highness, Television.
Because of television, matches kick off at noon when they shouldn’t.
Because of television, football is played like water polo.
Because of television, goals are celebrated like paying for groceries in installments—delayed.
Instead of leading football into the bright future everyone promised, VAR has dragged the sport backward—in pace, beauty, logic, and, most absurdly of all, fairness—even though it was introduced to achieve exactly the opposite.
The gods of football, however, weren’t satisfied with that. They added a pinch of politics to all these gimmicks and kitsch, just to shatter the last illusion we had about what was once our favorite sport and present the New Football Order in all its glory.
The true dimensions of that Order became clear the day FIFA and Gianni Infantino, following a phone call from Trump, lifted the suspension of the banned American striker. (Who, by the way, wasn’t shown a red card for a “verbal offense,” but because he nearly broke that little Bosnian player’s leg.)
At that moment, all the masks came off, and everything became crystal clear.
But, as usually happens in cowboy-style happy-ending movies, stubborn pride kicked in, and the Belgians saved football. They gave the American footballers a proper beating—and with them, the man most responsible for their defeat: the President of the United States!
And finally, a message to the gods of football, to Infantino and the Untouchables…
If they truly want to stop the decline of the world’s most popular sport, continue stuffing billions into their piggy banks, and make us happy by giving us back the game they stole, they will urgently have to return VAR to where it belongs—to television—and football to those it belongs to: the footballers and the fans.
Source: Antonije Kovačević Foto: Simon Hofmann/Fifa via Getty Images
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