This architect knows why VAR fails: "It is a fully manipulable tool"

Arbitration lives the moment of greatest discredit in recent years. The scandal of the millionaire payments from FC Barcelona to the vice president of active refereesJosé María Enríquez Negreira, for almost two decades together with the resounding failures of the video arbitration system (VAR) day after day, have caused a general malaise among fans, clubs, coaches and players. The poor explanations of the president of the Technical Arbitration Committee, Medina Cantalejo, are not convincing, nor is the use of VAR, which continues to star in resounding unresolved failures by the arbitration group under the tutelage of its current director and former referee, Clos Gómez.

Such is the level of boredom that an entity like Club Atlético Osasuna has been forced to resort to the report of the professional architect and former television collaborator of El Chiringuito and ACE, Nacho Tellado, in the middle of a war with the CTA and the Royal Spanish Football Federation, who contracted the Hawk-Eye system. The Navarrese club required that some doubts be clarified after the controversial match against Celta de Vigo (0-0), where the badly disallowed goal to Ez Abde for offside of Chimy Ávila He left the Pamplona institution without the three points. The response of the CTA, a letter from Medina Cantalejo through, ended with Osasuna affirming “there is not a single line from which an iota of self-criticism emerges“.

Osasuna entered thoroughly in this report commissioned to the architect Nacho Tellado. “When one week has elapsed since the action in question, a single image has been made available to public opinion that if something precisely does not favor is the confidence in the video arbitration system used. Trust must be worked and not be reduced to a mere leap of faith. The external report provided is clear when it comes to identifying the nature of the error produced, which has not been refuted by Mr. Medina Cantalejo, despite the fact that in his writing he has devoted several paragraphs to other technical issues,” the statement explains.

“There are no line or vertical deviations, what there is is a problem of criteria when choosing the references of both players”, concludes the explanatory phrase of Mr. Tellado in his audiovisual report that appears in the text of the Navarrese club. Tellado, who analyzes the plays through the NT Fútbol app of him and who various clubs have contacted him to study some playsresponds to this newspaper to denounce the primitive use of technology in offsides and the “incompetence in the use of VAR”.

ASK. The last time we spoke, you told me that VAR was “a fraud”. Do you still think the same?

ANSWER. Yes. The president of LaLiga, javier thebesHe said that “the VAR had to be given a spin. You have to see if the people who are there are the right ones, if it should be independent. It doesn’t work. There is incredible discomfort in all the teams. You have to find solutions”. Imagine the success of the VAR if the president of LaLiga admits that it is a disaster. Now the fear of criticizing everything has been lost. All the clubs are beginning to speak openly and the arbitration system is discussed. No one hides anymore and the criticism will not stop. I have been doing it for four years and ten analyzing plays.

Q. Osasuna called you to ask for your help after a controversial badly disallowed goal for Ez Abde against Celta de Vigo by Chimy Ávila. Jagoba Arrasate, coach of the Navarrese team, says that “it is difficult to believe in this (refereeing).” You did the report that the club sent to the CTA and now there is an open war between Osasuna and the CTA.

R. They contacted me after seeing my analysis on social networks. They put the player’s shoulder where they wanted and added the 3D stick figure where it suited them. They do not offer the actual image. Since the VAR was implemented in 2018, the images do not offer clarity. Unlike other leagues, such as the Premier League, transparency is not the same. Soccer in Spain is a religion and people are stopping to believe in a climate of tension and discredit. The current system has failed, but since this is Spain, it is impossible for anyone to admit the error or resign because everyone wants to get a piece of it.

Q. What is the system wrong?

R. In thousands of things. Sometimes it is a matter of criteria and others of drawing the lines and taking the references. In Osasuna-Celta de Vigo, with Ez Abde’s goal, the shoulder of a defender is grabbed in a certain area and the forward in another as references. Then in Villarreal-Real Betis from this past weekend, the lines had curves. It was a layout and calibration problem. They cannot determine offside with some fat lines. There is a huge inaccuracy to anyone who sees it. People want answers and neither the Royal Spanish Football Federation nor the Technical Committee of Referees are giving them. It’s a monkey with two guns.

Q. How is VAR used in Spain?

Q. The people who use the system, referees and audiovisual technicians, have no idea. They don’t know how to throw a line. The referees direct the movement and stop and move the line where they want. They do not have any type of rigor in their use. There is no point in having a system if those who use it do not understand it. There is a very good video where Velasco Carballo appears in front of the VAR machine. You see how they do it and it’s an absolute joke. It is assumed that the line they draw in two dimensions is calibrated and adapts to perspective, because they stop it where they want.

Q. Do you notice a lack of transparency in arbitration when making decisions in the VAR and justifying them? Osasuna denounced that precisely.

A. We don’t know why they make the decisions they do. We don’t even know what they’re talking about in the VOR room. With the outbreak of the Enríquez Negreira case and the payments from Barça, a phrase from the former vice president of the referees has come out that has caught my attention. In an email he suggested to Barça “I can help you with the VAR”. This means that the VAR is a totally manipulable tool.

Q. Is the VAR being manipulated?

R. Everything can be manipulated with power and the tools they have. If you decide to take a frame suitable or not. If you wait a second before or run it after. If the camera angle deceives or the perspective does. Lines are thrown without criteria. I don’t see that they are favoring a specific team, because there are errors every weekend that affect different teams and different games. It is a problem of incompetence because they do not take references well. What happens is that whoever uses the machine drags the line, takes the vertical line and places it where he wants. Also, they can’t do zoom with the computer.

Q. How?

R. The company chosen by the Royal Spanish Football Federation, Hawk-Eye puts stakes and paints with the paint. They position the image from far away from the play and then add quick transitions to transform it into 3D with two stick figures with the same proportions. As if Erling Haaland and Leo Messi were morphologically the same. They place the camera shot from very far away so that in the transition you don’t see in detail that the 3D does not overlap with the real image. You don’t notice anything. The reality is that they have made a tool not to improve football and how it works, but to mask VAR errors.

Q. Your words have not gone down very well with the CTA.

R. Both they and their spokesmen see me as a devil. They have never used a 3D program in their life. But I won’t stop doing what I do. In 2021 Leeds United asked me to do a report for the Premier League that reviewed plays from different teams. Unlike Spain, in England they thought with their heads and the clubs decided to go and protest together against the incompetence of arbitration. In the end, they recognized that they have many flaws. Here the clubs do not want to change anything and are silent when they generally benefit them. Osasuna has taken the first step, but it is a very particular case. More clubs should raise their voices.

Q. How do you see the future of VAR? Upgrade to?

A. Now they will add new parameters with the semi-auto offside… but it still has a huge human influence. They’re not “perfectly machine-made” as I’ve heard out there. You must go to the field and calibrate. They will keep pointing at the striker and defender and after that the digitized 3D image will come out. I said it last summer and I corroborated it at the World Cup in Qatar. They were wrong to point to the wrong defender in the Argentina-Saudi Arabia game in the canceled goal against Lautaro Martínez. The referee chooses the most advanced part. It’s a trap and you can’t get pinpoint accuracy or capture actual movement with that tool. The semi-automatic offside should be complementary, but never the definitive analysis that the lines on the real image are.

Arbitration lives the moment of greatest discredit in recent years. The scandal of the millionaire payments from FC Barcelona to the vice president of active refereesJosé María Enríquez Negreira, for almost two decades together with the resounding failures of the video arbitration system (VAR) day after day, have caused a general malaise among fans, clubs, coaches and players. The poor explanations of the president of the Technical Arbitration Committee, Medina Cantalejo, are not convincing, nor is the use of VAR, which continues to star in resounding unresolved failures by the arbitration group under the tutelage of its current director and former referee, Clos Gómez.