BfB

VAR has come to The World Cup – which is an event staged to attempt to distract Bradford City supporters from their lack of a manager, which is failing – and it is all not as it seems.

Bradford City’s own Ryan McGowan was furious when VAR was used to The French looked needlessly poor in this match. The lack of pressing in this post-Klopp world was odd. team he had a half decent chance of being in while Iceland seemed to get away with a foul against Argentina largely because there was something amusing about Iceland getting away with a foul against Argentina.

Both tackles seemed to be penalties – if you watched the footage at a speed other than the speed in which it happened, and deliberately pretended that a 2D image can replace a 3D one at giving depth perception, and then squinted – but VAR was deployed for one and not the other and so one was and one was not.

If this seems to you, dear reader, to be business as usual that is because it is. Referees have – for the entirety of football – been giving decisions on the basis of what they may or may not have seen and while VAR gives them some more sight in which to give those decisions it does not change the nature of a refereeing decision, in that it is a decision.

Technology

A digression on technology in football. We – the supporters of the game – were promised for decades that VAR would solve the problem of wrong decisions in football and obviously it will not.

This contrasts with Goal Line Technology which does a single job well and highlights the problems that technology should be used to solve in football. The factual – the discussion of what has happened – is subject to technology while interpretation is not.

A system which gives accurate GPS positions of players and the ball would be excellent at telling a referee if a player is in an offside position but that would not make that player offside.

Technology in football is best used in that context.

Decision

Decision by referees are judgements made, hopefully, in as unbiased a fashion as possible and it may be worth recognising that. The opaque thing in Refereeing is not that a decision was made – one can see that – but the reasons for that decision.

The consensus from Football’s authorities from top to bottom is that Referees are infallible. This has led to a contortion of the laws of the game – and the interpretation of those laws – around the idea that the Referee is never wrong they are just perceiving a judgement you did not. Charlie Wyke’s frequent withdrawn sending offs for Bradford City always come with a side of some official insisting that the decision was accurate even when it is repelled.

The solution to this problem would seem to be simple. The Referee submits a report on the game he has been in charge of – this happens at most levels if not all – and those reports are kept by the authorities. It seems to be a merciful gift to officials to make those reports both more verbose and public.

More verbose in that one has to believe that in the case of Iceland vs Argentina the Referee may be of a mind to write about the missed penalty decision that he did not see a foul during the incident, nor did VAR, nor did the linesmen or other officials.

Public because find the reasons for a Referee’s actions might highlight to supporters the judgements involved, even if those judgements are wrong.

Because judgement calls are never going to get any better than they are now. Technology can tell us if the ball went in but everything else is interpretation of events and good Referees are the ones which interpret events correctly.

Which is the key skill in Refereeing. A Referee needs to know the laws of the game and apply them to the action they have seen which is an act of interpreting the abstract of the law into the practical of the game. To be a good Referee is to be able to do this and, as evidenced by years of watching Referees, this is not the trait selected for.

Broadening and opening up Referee’s reports to the public would highlight this, and make everyone in football better able to know the good Referees from the poor ones rather than wasting time and effort discussing technologies which can never address the main concerns.

No one in England was going to be happy when it turned out that only two of the twenty two votes needed to bring the World Cup to these shores went to the nation and the accusations of corruption in FIFA and a broken bidding process quickly followed.

England’s bidding team congratulated Russia and Qatar – the host for 2018 and 2022 respectively – but went away cursing the system of handbags and kickbacks the exposure of which seemed to critically hole the attempt to bring the World Cup to the country. It is hard to imagine what more England could have put into a bid and near impossible to excuse every one of the twenty non-voting officials from looking at the facts of the English case and the propositions of others and veering towards the prospective.

So Davids Beckham and Cameron are united in disappointment, and once again Football steadfastly refuses to come home.

But where is it going? And what does the destination say about FIFA?

That Russian society has problems – regarded as a Mafia State Wikileaks tells us – is not a disqualification but the message sent to the supporters who made this farewell for Peter Odemwingie is a curious one.

What commitment to ridding racism from football is there in giving the crown jewel of the World game to such supporters. Will FIFA be left longing for the sound of the Vuvuzela if only to mask the monkey noises and jeering of black players which is heard in Russian stadiums? Indeed the final two in the voting were Russia and the joint Spanish and Portuguese bid with everyone but goldfish recalling the treatment Ashley Cole and other England players received when playing Spain four years ago.

FIFA talks fair play and ridding the game of racism but today’s decision shows that to be just that – talk – and asks questions which will go unanswered.

More serious questions though come from Qatar. A state which puts a five year jail sentence for homosexual men, that legally values a woman’s life as half that of a man’s, that still has on the books of law that converting from the state region is an offence punishable by death.

For FIFA award a World Cup to a country that enshrines intolerance in its laws turns the stomach. FIFA must have a powerful believe in the ability of football to rehabilitate both Russia and Qatar or they are prepared to cherish what others find objectionable.

FIFA head honcho Sepp Blatter told the seven bidding parties who went home empty handed to learn that football is as much about losing as it is about winning. Reflecting on the nature of those who have been so richly rewarded today one is forced to ask if a country that respects human rights, a game that is free of racism and the best footballing infrastructure in the world is not good enough to win the right to host the World Cup then what where criteria for selection anyway?

It was always though that during his career David Beckham would get his hands on the World Cup and today – as he lobbies delegates who will make the decision on England’s bid to host the 2018 competition of what is a very curious decision process – it seems that he may do.

Not – perhaps – something that will make up for the 2006 German summer where so much came to so little or the broken metatarsal in Japan in 2002 which saw England run out of steam against Brazil but an end to a career which may not have redefined football, but has certainly redefined footballers.

Beckham has been the poster boy for many things – Adidas, Sharpie, the 2018 bid – and all along his career he has been sighted as part of the over paid generation of footballers. Guilty often of little more than having a family and not being the sharpest tool in the box he has – as a player and as a personality – make a mountain out of his mount of talents and is as sinned against often as he is sinning.

His red card against Argentina was hardly the stuff of violent conduct, his early career exit from the England side hampered Steve McLaren’s side far more than it did the former captain’s career. His wife annoys a lot of people and his kids have curious names but he comes over with a certain charm and uses that charm to promote the campaign to host 2018 which we should all be behind.

So at some point tomorrow Beckham’s career might have the glorious conclusion suggested all along but Beckham is but the first of the multi-millionaire player to start the sail into the sunset.

If one assumes a player might have a dozen years playing on the sort of big Premier League contracts that the likes of Frank Lampard, Keiron Dyer, Steven Gerrard have – and we read on BfB about Graeme Tomlinson and how he was advised to and looked after his money – then we may start to see players exiting the game who could have earned the thick end of thirty million pounds.

(£50,000 a week, multiply by 52 weeks a year, multiple by 12 and offset the idea of tax and living expenses against the income from investments)

Once a footballer might use his earnings to buy a pub running it for the next thirty years. Robbie Fowler used the money Leeds threw at him to become one of the biggest landlords in Liverpool offering decent housing at good rents. Few players are as in touch with the community they rose from as Fowler.

There have been the odd player who went to the boardroom – Steve McMahon, Derek Doogan, Jimmy Hill, Ray Ranson – they have done so as parts of consortia but with the levels of money being given to players by clubs that need not always be the case.

At the conclusion of his Liverpool contract Steven Gerrard (who would be 34, I believe) could – if he wanted to – wander over the Mersey to Tranmere and easily buy the club lock, stock and barrel. There would be nothing to stop him signing himself to play in midfield either, or making himself manager. A footballing version of the auteur.

Likewise the likes of Frank Lampard could bankroll any League Two club out of the division (if we judge by Notts County’s example last season) and probably (if we look at Dean Hoyle at Huddersfield) challenge for promotion in the league above.

Football people leaving football with a chunk of money and almost anything to spend it on, it seems inevitable that they will come back to what they know and end up back involved in football. A generation of players who don’t have to take coaching badges and then beg the odd fishmonger from Grimsby for a job at the local club. They can give the fishmonger what he wants and buy the boardroom for himself.

Beckham can cap his career tomorrow but he – and the generation he spearheads – may end up with an impact in the game far beyond the day they last pull on their boots.

Peter Taylor is talking once again about the need for more loan signings at Valley Parade as he looks at the shape of his squad.

We’ve been forced to get young lads on loan because of the injuries we’ve had in some areas.

Of so the City manager said. Going into the specifics of the squad City’s injuries seem to emanate out from the right back berth taking in Simon Ramsden and Lewis Hunt as well as Shane Duff and Steve Williams at centreback. The lads drafted in are Rob Kiernan, Richard Eckersley now and previous Oliver Gill and Reece Brown.

Zesh Rehman – who can play both the right back and central defensive positions – seems to have become persona non grata and when Taylor talks about the City squad Rehman – it appears – is not to be considered.

David Cameron this week joins the English bid to host the World Cup in 2018 – one of the things he will tell FIFA is that unlike the Russians racism is not a problem in English football – as the Prime Minister joins in with the national game.

Cameron and Rehman met last week with the PM praising the City captain’s foundation which aims to promote the cause of British Asians in football. Cameron has some nice things to say to the City skipper and – albeit only briefly reported on the City website before being removed – the Prime Minister offered this opinion as related by Rehman.

He seemed a little mystified as to why I had been in and out of the side this season despite leading the team to good results and performances.

Reaching the position of Prime Minister is a lot about being able to say the right thing to the right person at the right time – one of Cameron’s predecessors Tony Blair famously had a different favourite food depending on where he was when asked: Fish and Chip in South Shields, something French when down that London – and this need not always be considered what is correct but one has to wonder why Rehman cools his heels while Rob Kiernan and Richard Eckersley are in the side.

The arguments of playing other people’s players over our own in this case and – especially playing Tom Adeyemi over young, owned players like David Syers – has been talked about at length and is a separate question as to why Rehman is isolated from the squad.

(As much as it pains me to say it) Cameron is right that Rehman’s performances in the City side have seen good result and good performances – much of the optimism coming into this season was on the back of the last six games of last season which that Rehman put in a half dozen great displays – but nevertheless something in the mix of Rehman and Bradford City seems to misfire when it comes to a place in the starting eleven. The club seem to acknowledge this if only in their desire not to talk about it shown with the rapid use of the memory hole.

One could speculate about what goes on in the dressing room but it would be just that – speculation – but whatever the reason a cash strapped club seems to find money to bring in a player who can play while a contracted one is on the sidelines.

The club captain who cannot get in the team for a couple of borrowed players, the guy who does great work off the field but can’t get onto it. A player who plays well when he plays, but does not often play.

It is a mystery – and one that I have no answers for – but a mystery which even the Prime Minister cannot fathom.