Whether you like or not, the conversation around VAR is here to stay.
But what’s the point of discussing present and future decisions that will be assisted by VAR when we can just simply rewrite history by looking at what could have been in football from the past?
That’s a lot easier and not quite as painful.
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So where to begin? Simple – the most ludicrous refereeing decision of the past decade, Frank Lampard’s goal against Germany in the 2010 World Cup.
If we’d had VAR back then, this is what would have definitely happened… strap in.
Firstly, we’d have easily won the World Cup
Lampard’s goal is given, the score between Germany becomes 2-2, and the momentum would have been all ours.
We obviously would have grabbed another goal, navigated our way past Argentina in the next round, brushed aside Spain in the semis and demolished Netherlands in the final.
Following this, world figures would have praised the use of VAR
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A little known Donald Trump would pipe up to claim he had always been a big fan of Lampard and the use of VAR, shoehorn in a dig at the Democrats and get a piece of information wrong, somehow all within 280 characters.
Looking back, it was a chilling foreshadowing of the future.
Emile Heskey is knighted for services to football and ‘internet culture’
After being the fallguy for so many years, the authorities reward Emile Heskey for his footballing prowess – but the increasing power of memes mean Heskey is given a dual honour for his services to jokes made about him for so many years on the world wide web.
Frank Lampard is voted England’s all-time favourite player
England’s hero, the lion above all Three Lions, Lampard is now the most universally loved player in all of England’s history.
So much is his confidence he poses for pictures in glossy magazines claiming to be ‘bigger than Wills and Kate’.
Lampard is also so popular around the world, the most popular YouTube video ever breaks through the nine billion mark, an achievement that won’t be beaten until 2019 when a song called ‘Despacito’ continues its inexplicable world domination.
This retrospective has made us even angrier about that 2010 afternoon in Bloemfontein – I mean, what could have been eh?
We know the debate around VAR will continue on for a bit of time now, but if one of your mates thinks it’s going to ‘destroy our game’ or make football worse, just show them this and remind them that using technology to improve decisions is, in the long run, probably worth it.