Neil Humphreys: VAR is right but still feels wrong
Tech sucks joy from live football experience
The video assistant referee (VAR) is destined to become the most polarising rule change in English football, because it's logically right, but emotionally so wrong.
The road to VAR was paved with good intentions, but the journey is causing motion sickness.
We're not feeling so good right now. Something is off.
Everyone understands - and mostly agrees with - why the English Premier League has embarked upon the VAR crusade, but we're still feeling queasy because we're being robbed.
As the game between Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur demonstrated, the new technology is diminishing the sport's very essence - the joy of a goal celebration.
That goal celebration is everything. It's why we keep coming back, like hopeless addicts clinging on for one more goal-fix.
We know the process. We know the outcome. We've got it down.
The strike, the rising anticipation, the brief uncertainty, the bulging net, the briefest of glances towards uniformed men with flags and then the volcanic eruption.
Nothing else comes close.
We are united in our delirium. It's the moment reality vanishes and magic happens.
But men sitting behind TV screens are taking the magic away.
That's not their intention.
On the contrary, VAR's overriding purpose is to remove outrage over an incorrect decision.
Like a small-town sheriff, VAR dispenses justice: Cold, swift, objective justice.
And maybe that's the point.
It's leaving us cold and objective, when football should be neither.
City's stoppage-time "goal" was correctly ruled out, in a cold and objective sense.
When Gabriel Jesus whipped in a strike to give his side a 3-2 lead over Tottenham, justice appeared done. City had dominated and deserved victory.
PRICELESS SPONTANEITY
Their players and punters came together to do what must come naturally if football is going to maintain its priceless spontaneity.
They celebrated a goal.
And then, referee Michael Oliver put his finger to his ear, an act of symbolism that will soon rival a Roman emperor giving a thumbs-down. The goal was referred to those invisible men and their fussy machines.
The VAR review concluded, correctly, that the ball bounced off Aymeric Laporte's arm as it travelled through to Jesus.
Handball. No goal. The game ended 2-2. Pandemonium.
Only there wasn't.
A disallowed goal will never trigger the same level of intensity as a goal being scored, not after a two-minute delay, not after much of the euphoria and tension has dissipated.
There's no equitable yin-and-yang response in such situations. VAR can't bring balance to the force like some sort of Jedi mind trick.
Tottenham's high of having their opponents' goal chalked off can never reach City's earlier high of scoring.
It doesn't seem fair, especially when considered in the context of the Champions League quarter-final meeting between these sides back in April, when VAR intervened again to deny City a late winner.
But of course, it is fair, in a literal sense. That's exactly what VAR's pernickety, microscopic examinations and re-evaluations are: Fair.
So what's all the complaining about?
The EPL demanded the correct decisions, and now the league has them, for the most part, which is proving to be the trickiest irony.
The obsession with black-and-white rulings is damaging our relationship with a game that is anything but black and white.
It's messy, spontaneous and emotional. In fact, the relationship is entirely emotional.
Just check the Twitter feed of any EPL club for proof of that.
In its quest for absolute certainty, the VAR demands a temporary halt on one of the game's absolute certainties - the instinctive goal celebration.
As video replays strive to remove emotional, subjective responses from the match-day process, it seeks to do the same to supporters.
Put the joy on hold. Wait for official permission to celebrate.
Men with cameras now control the right to happiness, turning games into tech-dominated Orwellian chores.
But supporters can't leave their emotions at the door and VAR can't guarantee that the greatest experience in sport - the goal celebration - won't be ruined over and over again across the season.
In the end, we might end up feeling like Hugo Lloris.
The Spurs goalkeeper thought City's late "goal" was legitimate.
When Jesus' strike was disallowed, Lloris didn't celebrate.
There were no giddy histrionics, just a sheepish smile and a sense of bemusement.
In such an anti-climatic moment, Lloris spoke for all of us.
VAR delivers justice, but it's proving to be such a joyless experience.
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