It is always important not to bend too far with the weather, to avoid squalls and thunderclaps, and to be especially vigilant of the worst and deadliest storm of all, the manufactured media storm.
Does the Premier League truly have a “player behavior” problem? Given the heat, the chatter, and the clipped punditry faces prophesying the decline of all that is fine and noble, like Evelyn Waugh lamenting the death of the carpeted bathroom, it has been tempting to file the current rage about rage with all the other things that have appeared, momentarily, to signal the coming of the rapture.
For a time, spitting was a common practice. Decades were spent worrying about sex scandals (i.e., people having sex), affluent young men’s consumption habits, and Raheem Sterling’s mother’s kitchen sink. Typically, the narrative is the same. Football players are hazardous symbols of immortality. They must be subdued, or else, candidly, the lid will come off this thing, and we’ll have to send in policemen with batons and helmets from the 1970s.
Assistant referee Constantinos Hatzidakis’s completely unacceptable, yet curiously relatable elbow to the face of Andrew Robertson has exacerbated the current situation. Elsewhere, Aleksandar Mitrovic was handed an exemplary suspension for threatening Chris Kavanagh. Different teams, including Newcastle, Arsenal, Manchester United, and others, have been accused of tactically intimidating officials.
No more players have been booked or ejected than in previous seasons. But the atmosphere is negative.
The energy is negative. There is a notion that something is taking shape. And this certainly appears to be more than a typical teacup tornado.
First, to be an amateur official today is to be exposed to a pantomime of abusive mimicry. Whoever believes that people at lower levels do not assimilate what they see from professionals is living in an alternate reality.
From the youth level to the Selkent Sunday leagues, individuals imitate boots, celebrations, tactics (“No, Maximilian! Maintain vertical transitions!”), and, of course, conduct. Volunteer match officials are now routinely exposed to toxic harassment. When nobody is interested in playing, the game fades and withers away.
And secondly, this is significant at the elite level because it has begun to influence the spectacle’s tone and texture. As always, how participants behave is being reshaped by the gravitational forces surrounding them. An elbow to the face always has several causes, but VAR is a major one.
Not the frustrations of poorly implemented VAR, which are accompanied by routine demands to eliminate it after each minor error. The issue at hand is the unexpectedly altered dynamic between the individuals at the center of the spectacle. The relationship between cause and effect seems quite evident. Suddenly referees appear weak. The referee is now persuadable. The referee is currently a constant source of publicly corrected errors. The players sense, either implicitly or explicitly as a part of team preparation, that nothing is final, that the outcome of a game can be affected by indirect lobbying to a higher authority and even by certain behavior in the interim while a review is being conducted.
The referee becomes an unpleasant and imperfect mediator who connects you to the real person.
What should participants do in this circumstance? Not to attempt to influence this procedure? This is now a part of pre-match preparation. Thomas Frank recently discussed the plan to “front up” to the fourth official during Brentford’s game against Newcastle, to adopt a more combative stance for sound tactical reasons in response to Jason Tindall’s expert in-game chivvying.
VAR has strengthened managers’ referee baiting game strategies. Press, exert force, and massage the margins. Refereeing has become a process, a power struggle, and a collision of competing truths.
VAR has impacted the relationship between athletes and officials in more intangible ways. Observation changes things, from participants and authorities to officials monitoring players and officials observing other officials.
You can even see this process, what we might call Howard Webb’s Uncertainty Principle, in the way referees stride to their VAR screen mid-watch, the creation of an entirely new aspect of the shared public spectacle in which it is now required to watch on a screen while a man in shorts watches a screen, to decode his responses, to read his frown, the nature of his swivel back towards the pitch, the semiotics of the VAR screen ritual.
Managers can see players’ reactions in real time on their pitch-side tablets, which show the same video.
Observed in close-up, it is evident that some referees are responding emotionally to this drama, knowing what will occur once they pivot away from the screen and perform their variety of new dramatic arm gestures. Performers anticipate the audience’s shout and their peers’ acclaim and adjust their moves accordingly. That is understandable. How can we expect that those involved will not be affected?
This results in a severely fractured relationship, highlighted by the recurring phenomenon of Howard’s Regrets, in which Howard Webb tours the country like a self-flagellating pilgrim monk with a large VAR screen strapped to his back, apologizing for the terrible things that men do. Brighton’s penalty appeal was denied. Strange occurrences in Chelsea. Inability to correctly draw lines. Both sides of this argument can be traced back to the fundamental flaws of the video system: the belief that it is possible to provide completely “correct” officiating of a subjective event; and, of course, the fact that the people applying the video technology are the same individuals whose errors made the technology necessary in the first place. Fail again. Fail with numerous cameras.
Combining this incompetence with a world of cameras and secret adjudicator committees has added a very trendy note of conspiracy theory, a suspicion of arse-covering, closing ranks, and collegiate self-protection.
The concept of an honest error is no longer relevant. Nobody here is trustworthy. There exists an idealized conclusion in which GPS and AI can work together to police offside, and where VAR intervention is limited to the most basic once-a-month fodder, the covert headbutt, and the key assist provided by an invading Labrador.
But this item is now available to the public. The relationship has been subtly redefined, and the behavior has been altered. It is unsurprising that, in the midst of this, we may begin to collide with one another, that agitated and frazzled individuals will tug and prod and shout and become a little disoriented amidst the commotion and heat.
Therefore, Robertson grasps a garment, and Hatzidakis reacts at the moment. They are both victims of this unplanned experiment, bruised and buffeted by these bizarre new pressures, the unintended consequences of a technology that no one appears to be in control of at the moment.
