Championship referee Bobby Madley admits he hates VAR amid the discussion around whether or not it should be brought into the second-tier.
The West Yorkshire-based official, who took charge of Hull City’s home defeat to Sunderland in October and Ruben Selles’ first defeat at Coventry City in December, has launched a scathing attack on the controversial technology.
Clubs so far in the Championship have resisted the temptation to bring a version of it in. Previously, former City bosses Liam Rosenior and Tim Walter were both keen to see it introduced after feeling they were on the wrong end of poor refereeing decisions, joining the growing calls for change given what’s on the line in English football’s second tier.
Madley, however, is not so keen, as the ex-Premier League official has been explaining at a science festival discussing technology in the Cotswolds.
“As a fan, hate it, hate it. Love the Championship, love League One – I’m still a fan,” Madley said, speaking at the Cheltenham Science Festival during an event on technology in sport. “I love League One because you score a goal, you look at the referee, you look at the assistant, he hasn’t put his flag up, it’s a goal.
“It [VAR] takes that emotion away from it, and football is a game where there could be one moment in the game, one goal, and that’s it. To take that emotion away, to have to wait and wait, and what feels like an eternity, as a fan, I’m not a huge fan of that experience.”
“There’s so much money in football, it’s business-driven. So any mistake is perceived to cost people money. And I don’t think most football fans were clambering over each other to get video technology.
“The players weren’t, the referees weren’t, but the people who run football, they are multimillion-pound and billion-pound people, and they had issues with referees getting things wrong. I think we’ve got to the stage where people go, ‘Sorry, we’re ruining football with this now’. But we knew the monster that had been created. As referees, we knew what was coming.”
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