Nickyboy wrote:They're trialing giving managers in youth football challenges like in tennis and a few other sports. That's how it should have been done from the start. If a player felt the ref had made a mistake they can ask for it to be reviewed. Just make goal line and offside automatic and challenges for other decisions. How many times have we seen a goal disallowed when defenders weren't even complaining about an issue just for some odd hairline handball or something.
It should have been good for the game but they've managed to fuck it up monumentally
It's a lot better now on that front that in the first year where every goal seemed to be reviewed and we saw some absolute nonsense decisions, often in our favour on penalties which we never even asked for.
Challenges is a logical approach which can help to rationalise what gets reviewed, however its a bit more tenuous for a manager to challenge a decision on an event that happened 60 yards away, vs in tennis where you can be fairly sure what you think you've seen as the ball flashed past you. Allowing challenges creates some tactical gamesmanship, slowing the game down purposely to take momentum out of the opposition is a well known trick in tennis under the review system for the better players who need a breather. I'd prefer if we go down that route that it's an onfield decision of the captain - as he can quickly speak with the affected player and ask 'were you touched' to know instantly if there's merit in a challenge.
But then what happens when something blatent happens that could have been reviewed by VAR, but you're out of challenges - do we just ignore that it was a wrong on field decision?
There is no perfect system - it will evolve over time, and we'll reach a consensus position eventually on the "least worst" approach.
