VAR, 3 little birds and an unrequited love for Wataru Endō
“Singing sweet songs, of melodies pure and true”.
Did you see it? Wasn’t it just marvellous? A piece of pure sporting theatre, art and drama, and all in real time, instantaneous motion. Football delight. Sporting despair. A deserved lead for the plucky underdogs against the “Billion Pound Bottle Jobs”. 30 minutes for the Prima Donnas of London’s King’s Road to hit back against a team of teenagers led by a colossus. A perfect curling free-kick from the captain of Scotland met equally perfectly by the head of the captain of the Netherlands, the ball arcing out of the despairing reach of the goalkeeper of the Serbia national team, and into a net housed in the Coliseum of England’s national stadium, Wembley.
Cue pandemonium in the stands behind the goal. The leaping for joy of figures all dressed in Red both on the field and in the stands. A poetry of sporting communion between heroes and disciples. The ecstasy of scoring a goal in a football final at Wembley Stadium, and to an audience of hundreds upon hundreds of millions all around the world. Cue red coloured flares being lit in the stands, held aloft by fans experiencing a very different ecstasy than the colossus they adore and a captain who’s brilliant header had given them, his team, the collective of fan and club, a precious lead in a showpiece Cup Final.
Or had he?
After an interminable delay that sucked the excitement of this sporting drama bone dry and after everyone, those present in the stadium in Chelsea Blue or Liverpool Red or the hundreds of millions around the world watching on television, had stared at their shoes whilst pondering the meaning of life and whether there was time to make a quick cup of tea, the undead anti-human ghouls and goblins of VAR decided, via the medium of television and an overwhelming desire for totalitarian control and dystopian bureaucracy, that the referee, you, me, the 85,000+ inside Wembley and yes, an audience of hundreds of millions around the world, were wrong, our eyes were deceiving us, and that wonderful piece of footballing skill caught “in the moment”, in the flow of a game, live, direct, instantaneous art, drama and sporting theatre, well, it just had to be deleted.
Your eyes are lying to you, now sit down, stare at your shoes and be quiet, order a Diet Coke and an overpriced under-cooked hot-dog, and we’ll tell you when you can believe those lying eyes of yours again.
VAR — The Death Knell of the “Beautiful Game”.
For the uninitiated, VAR (or Video Assistant Referee) is a singular extra referee watching the game on a series of monitors many miles away from the actual referee watching the actual game of football with his own actual eyes and who is invariably never more than 10–15 yards away from the actual action, the actual game of football being played out in front of him and, here’s the crucial aspect, he has the very best seat in the house. But along comes VAR with their coloured lines of doom and whilst everyone stares at their shoes, they squiggle lines over a forever moving sporting event now stopped, for a minute, maybe two, often three and sometimes four, before they adjudicate on a game they’ve killed stone dead and then, get this, they invariably tell you, me and everyone regardless of which team we all separately support, that our eyes can’t be trusted, and that live piece of football drama didn’t happen, must be forgotten, and instantly deleted.
If you can’t see this for the big fucking suck that it is then you’ll no doubt disagree with me that VAR is a deliberate dumbing down of the “Beautiful Game”. Deliberate. It doesn’t favour one team over another, nor is it biased in favour of the “Big 6” to ensure they retain their closed shop position at the pinnacle of English football. VAR is biased against every team as it’s killing the very game it purports to be providing “correct” decisions for. But these “correct” decisions make umpteen millions in profits for betting companies (a major sponsor of the sport) and yet the rabbit hole goes far deeper than merely the accumulation of filthy lucre.
Organised, bureaucratic, stop start fun, cheer on demand, look at the big screen to tell you your eyes are lying to you oh, and don’t forget to tuck into your hotdog that’s as stone cold as the football you’re now not watching.
Spontaneous, in the moment, free expression, immediate responses, joyous to despair, anguish to ecstasy. A Cup Final winning goal. A Cup Final embarrassment. In front of an audience of hundreds of millions around the world. Instantaneous, a connected human family, songs of joy and relief, celebration or mockery. Oh hold on, VAR are checking the validity of our collective eyesight again, and deliberately bringing us all into line with the vapid, vacuous, shallow and unexciting world being built around the eyes that dare not see or have perhaps been trained not to?
VAR must be encased in concrete a mile thick and buried at the bottom of the world’s deepest ocean and treated as hazardous waste forever more. But it won’t be, in fact it will only get worse and worse and you’ll be trained to love your lying eyes and repeat the mantra that 2+2=5.
Anyway, can I have a slurp of your Diet Coke please?
All’s well that ended well as they say, or at least it ended well for my beloved Reds of Liverpool who triumphed through, irony alert, an almost exact mirrored replica of the goal that wasn’t with 2 minutes remaining of a Cup Final their gaggle of teenage boys won against the Laurel and Hardy show that is Chelsea Football Club. Lambasted as an expensive team of “Billion Pound Bottle Jobs” by ex England and Manchester United legend Gary Neville on TV co-commentary, Chelsea are a team perfectly befitting the VAR age of football, and they lost a Wembley Cup Final to a team of teenagers, a colossus of a captain from the Netherlands, Scotland too, and not forgetting the unrequited love of my life, the captain of Japan Wataru Endō.
Waturu joined Liverpool just last Summer and, truth be told, was a late, but inspired transfer pick when both of their primary midfield transfer targets chose the comedy of Chelsea rather than the collecting of winner’s medals at Liverpool. One of the two left Wembley with a loser’s medal and a despicable X-rated horror tackle and horrible display to his record whilst his fellow Summer mate presumably watched the match at home on the television. You may decide for yourselves how hard and for how long I and my fellow Liverpool Reds laughed at the irony.
Waturu is 31 years old and relinquished the captaincy of his then current team VfB Stuttgart in Germany when a Stuttgart born manager and genial German Jürgen Klopp asked him to join his Liverpool evolution (sic). I was surprised if more than a little overjoyed as I’d fallen head over heels in love with the Japanese national captain at the 2022 FIFA World Cup and whilst acknowledging that he may be a “stop gap” signing as Klopp’s evolving team enters future seasons, he was perfect for the role Klopp signed him for: a defensive midfielder to protect the defence behind him and to chase and harry for the ball for the attackers in front of him. A simplistic portrayal but a largely accurate one. In the halcyon days before VAR his role would be described as one of a “water carrier”, to fetch and carry the ball, to undertake the ugly tasks of chasing and pressing for the return of that precious bag of wind. Get the ball. Keep the ball. Keep it moving to a Red shirt. You underestimate the role of a water carrier at your peril.
Due to his more defensive positioning and after breaking through an injury plagued midfield to claim a permanent place in the Liverpool starting XI, I’ve gushed praise with every passing game and joked that my unrequited love for the midfielder would become public knowledge, as well as an offer of marriage, should he ever score a goal for the Mighty Reds of my footballing heart. He promptly scored a gem of a goal to turn a defeat into a win within days! Oh my sweet love Waturu!
I’ve yet to hear back from him in much the same way as Elon Musk refuses to return my telephone calls and repeated requests that he and I sit down and watch the film “True Romance” together. He shares my love for this Quentin Tarantino written, Tony Scott directed masterpiece, and I’d love to pick his brain before he inserts a microchip into mine. It only seems fair.
But although one-sided, my love for this Japanese superstar bounced to the moon and back yesterday as he covered “every blade of grass” that Wembley has to offer in that footballing cliche of yore and was barely able to run come extra-time, hobbled around the after-match celebrations on crutches and, according to his manager, having the “stiffest legs” he’d ever seen leaving a football field. “Wataru Endō, oh my god. He walked through the ceremony with the stiffest legs I ever saw” before Klopp would go on to describe the unrequited love of my life as a “machine” and (biggest compliment of all) “defensively insane”.
Wataru Endō has his first winner’s medal as a Liverpool player, the senior professional guiding a gaggle of 5–6 players around him that are a decade or more his junior. I was far beyond being proud at how these teenagers bested the Billionaires from Old London Town. I cried like a teenage girl when the Dutch colossus hoisted that silver Georgian Urn to a Wembley night out sky. I swooned over a beautiful man from Japan who has a hold of my heart and I hope he’ll take care of it in the Red shirt of Liverpool for many more seasons to come.
Then they played “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley over the Stadium speakers, and I cried like a teenage girl once more.
"3 Little Birds" at Wembley Stadium, 25th February 2023.
Postscript (originally posted to my Medium blog)
It’s come to my attention that comments are often left on my posts after I’ve posted the article to Facebook Medium Groups. I appreciate the claps (though I don’t believe many of you actually read my articles) but the comments that trouble me are from people that post an interpretation of my article as to how other people should feel and interpret my article.
What the fuck is THAT all about?
Not I like/dislike/wish to compliment you/wish to say your article is rubbish or any other combination of personal take-aways from my writing. But an interpretation as to how others should read my writing! “What the author is trying to say here……….etc”. Yes, the author is me, so how about addressing me and how YOU feel about my writing. You’re not a VAR referee you know!
Other readers do not need you interpreting my writing for them. They can believe their own lying eyes, thank you all the same.
And while we’re on the subject: I was approached by someone (presumably a human but you never know these days) offering me their writing services for my blog! For a price, they’d write a host of articles for me blah boring blah, and all the while sending hundreds of thousands of new readers to my blog. Hooray!
A VAR world filled with automaton droids, cutting and pasting their way into a dystopian future where no-one will have a single thought of their own anymore (unless someone else has written it down for them) whilst other “people” interpret what the writer (but not the actual writer) wishes to convey to their audience.
Bar-coded humans. In a QR coded world.
Can I have another slurp of your Diet Coke?