Mission Creep (Part…One Million, Probably) 
Rory Smith
Conferences are big business these days. It’s not just Zoomers and overworked tech Lib-Brotarians who spend so much time online that they are placing increasing premiums on doing anything IRL. So are other marginalized groups: I spent a day last week with football’s executive class in a lavish London hotel at the FT Business of Football Summit; a couple of days later, the game’s rule-makers gathered together for chitchat, canapés and rule-changes in Cardiff.
The sum total of their work was a succession of tweaks to the Laws of the Game – always capitalized, never settled – that will be introduced in time for this summer’s men’s World Cup. As Mark Chapman, one of the aggregate “Match of the Day” hosts, pointed out this week: using the biggest sporting event on the planet to play around with the rules is definitely a choice.
Most of them seem at least faintly sensible. A countdown timer on throw-ins and goal-kicks. A gentle and inherently rational expansion of the definition of what counts as denial of a goalscoring opportunity. Allowing Video Assistant Referees to adjudicate on whether a player’s second yellow card was warranted, in order to minimize the risk of unnecessary sendings-off.
I’ve spoken to a couple of former players, and one former official, and all of them agreed this last one was a good thing. It is, after all, an injustice when a player is wrongly dismissed for a second bookable offense. This amendment is simply an acknowledgment that there was a lacuna – as well as a logical inconsistency – in VAR’s responsibilities.
All of them assured me that, with such limited scope, there could be no downsides. But the thing is: this is how it always starts. How long is it until a player is sent off for a perfectly valid second yellow, only for there to be an outcry over how soft the first one is? Why, if we are to take this to its extremes, is it the second yellow that can be assessed, and not the first?
I have, this season, reached the conclusion that the only available moral position on VAR is to abolish it. The costs outweigh the benefits. But I’m just about smart enough to know which way the wind is blowing. If I understood what Polymarket was, and I don’t, I would be backing there to be another amendment a couple of years down the line, in which all bookings fall under VAR’s purview. That has been the direction of travel for years. VAR is a case study in mission creep. We know this by now.
