Glimpse behind the VAR curtain was not enough: we need the full reality show

T here are some modern innovations so discomfiting, so problematic, so straightforwardly up-and-down wrong, that no amount of exposure, elucidation or soft lighting can make them acceptable. This week football fans were forced to confront one such example. Apologies for beginning in such a strident manner but: Michael Owen as a TV presenter? That’s a straight no from me.

Anyway, VAR. The digital refereeing supplement has generated no end of ire since it was introduced to England in 2019. Only now, however, have the officials who oversee it sought properly to engage with the public on the matter. And so, on Monday, we had Sky and BT Sport welcome the Professional Game Match Officials Limited technical director, Howard Webb, to their studios where Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville gave him a gentle grilling and Owen did his best to deliver a series of uncomplicated VT cues.

On the touchscreen were a series of incidents from the current Premier League season that had, in some way, been affected by VAR. Perhaps a goal had been belatedly awarded, as it was to Joelinton against West Ham, or overturned, as with Kai Havertz against Liverpool. Maybe a penalty decision had been revisited – such as Jacob Kiwior’s handball against Newcastle – or maybe it hadn’t but should have been, as with Marco Senesi’s foul against Ivan Toney, where it turned out Toney had fouled the Bournemouth defender first.

Webb was on hand to explain these decisions and, in the language PGMOL prefers to use when it has flubbed something up, “acknowledge” certain mistakes. For the first time, however, we were also able to hear officials as they made their mistakes in real time. Recorded audio between on-field referees, their assistants, and the VAR team in