The souring incident was a VAR disallow of a clearly offside goal after the final whistle in Southampton’s match against Brighton and Martin was fuming right after.
Southampton were left feeling aggrieved they failed to go 2-1 up on Friday night through Cameron Archer, who scored, only to be ruled off-side after an exhaustive VAR check on the premise of interference by Adam Armstrong. There has been an outrage before this moment; Kaoru Mitama had scored a goal and Flynn Downes too had made a goal.
As expected, when Martin was confronted by Brighton’s manager Fabian Hurzeler at end of the match he was furious dealing with the media. Taking a frustrations out on the VAR decision, Martin passionately had a go at the inconsistency in the VAR decision making and the lack of clear usage of VAR.
I asked him to elaborate his past experiences On this, Martin said that he has experienced a recent penalty decision that went in the favor of the other side and not Southampton and pointed towards the pitch to show his disgust towards the kind of decisions that take place on the pitch. He was sad that different VAR decisions had been made and this was supposed to eliminate grey areas in refereeing.
Martin went on to analyse the different aspects of the disallowed goal saying that the contact of Armstrong with the goalkeeper would have been a foul if they had occurred in any other place in the field. To further illustrate, he deducted that the movement of the goalkeeper was not restricted in any way due to Armstrong’s position!, this he wondered whether VAR was helpful to have interfered abuting on the perceived interferences.
As a frustrated Martin wondered whether the goal was rightfully disallowed because the contact barely affected the goalkeeper’s further participation in the game. I’ll let Martin focus on the details that people paid attention to while considering the rule and the usage of VAR – doubt and dissatisfaction.
He fails to express his disappointment while most of the time the decision made is against his team a fact that complicates issues making the game full of stress. The many hours tangled up in affirming decisions slows down the match’s progress, which can only lead to frustration.
That is why, if VAR is extended to the level where it takes significantly more time for the referees to come up with their decision, then it is not a useful implement. Referee decisions must be as clear-cut as the game and there should be some consistency with them to promote fairness and fun. Misinterpretations and inconsistent calls take away from the player’s experience which in return helps to demolish fan’s trust in the system.