Dammit We're Talking About VAR Again
The lack of a VAR review on a potential game-winning goal scored by the Philadelphia Union stole the headlines from another comeback performance.
The Philadelphia Union scored their sixth and seventh goals from losing positions in Major League Soccer play this season in Sunday’s 2-2 draw with Atlanta United.
The Union’s continued fight and determination to get results should have been the main talking point, but instead, we are mired in yet another debate about VAR.
Mikael Uhre had a go-ahead goal taken away from him when the assistant referee ruled the Union forward offside in an inch-tight call.
The screenshot and video from the controversial call have been examined too many times over the last 20 or so hours.
The process in which the final decision on the call was made has come under even more scrutiny.
The on-field ruling was that no clear-and-obvious error was made on the offside call. That led to an all-time post-game quote from Union manager Jim Curtin.
“What does clear and obvious even mean?,” Curtin remarked. “What’s clear and obvious to me might not be to the next human. Millions of people watch Two and a Half Men and I think it’s the dumbest show ever. It’s clear and obvious to me that it’s terrible.”
Before he unleashed his opinions on sitcoms, Curtin made some valid points that did not go as viral for how to fix the problem that came about on Sunday, and in the Eastern Conference semifinal against FC Cincinnati.
“There’s nothing harder than making those calls. I always hear that we’re supposed to err on the side of the attacker and keep the flag down. That’s why we have VAR. You can’t blame (assistant referee) Katherine (Nesbitt) for thinking it was offsides.
“But now when we go to video we should have a clear view one way or the other that is line with where goals are scored, which is from the 18-yard-line and in. I’m not complaining about it because it’s an even game and can go either way. We could’ve won it or lost it.
“But let’s have a view that’s not from literally a blimp that’s on the side angle shot. Let’s have a view straight across the 18-yard-box where we can see and make these big decisions because they are game-winning and game-losing decisions. Whether I win or lose on those decisions, I’m not complaining on that part, but I think everybody wants to get them right.
“The linesmen and lineswomen have an impossible job. For anyone whose ever tried to do that where you almost have to look at where a ball is played at the speed these players are playing at and put it up, put it down, it’s impossible. Let’s get camera angles that help it. You can tell me that the goal-line technology costs millions of dollars and I’ll say okay that is a big expense to put that in every stadium, but you can literally have, I’m sure Apple can make it, a $10 camera that is just stationary and we can get a good view straight across.”
I think Curtin did a good job here of toeing the line between sounding bitter about a call not going in his team’s favor and actually producing some good reasoning.
If the play went to VAR, there’s no guarantee the call would have gone in favor of the Union.
Upon first glance, it looked like Uhre was onside, but if the AR with a direct line of sight to the play believes it was offside, it makes you think if Uhre was on or not.
That comes back to Curtin’s point about better camera angles.
Major League Soccer took the bag from Apple before the 2023 offseason and now has Lionel Messi on our screens every week.
We shouldn’t have to be subjected to what ifs in an era where there’s almost too much technology in some cases (cough cough Premier League) to break down these calls.
Instead, it leads to a debate between social media experts and gets us nowhere in the discussion. It also takes away from the play throughout the other 89 minutes, which from a Union perspective was solid for around 60 minutes.
It’s an issue we keep hoping to not have and yet it rears its ugly head yet again and no solution comes from it. It devalues the actual product and takes away from the actions on the pitch.
Alright, let’s talk about the actual play because the Union had some really nice moments.
Mikael Uhre and Kai Wagner delivered quality strikes in the second half to rescue a point from a 2-0 deficit.
Uhre’s goal came about because of careless passing by the Atlanta defense. The Dane picked up the ball in the middle of the field and fired a shot into the top of the net past Brad Guzan.
“That’s a striker’s goal and when another team makes a mistake you have to punish them,” Curtin said. “You have to have that killer instinct to make them pay. Mikael did that. He had a lot of work to do from the angle he had. An unexpected mistake on the pass back that he was alert to and finished the play off.”
A lot of the discourse surrounding Uhre over the last 12 months has been about just scoring goals instead of being in the position to score goals and miss those opportunities.
The former does not happen without the latter, though, because it requires Uhre to put in the effort a forward must have in the Union’s system.
Uhre was ready to pounce on the mistake because of how he was positioned around the center circle.
The Union were building up in possession in the seconds before the Atlanta mistake, but Julian Carranza was cut off on the right touchline.
The presence of Carranza and Quinn Sullivan in tight space forced the quick decision-making and the error that followed.
“From that point on, it shifted the momentum of the game. We had that goal and Kai’s goal in pretty quick succession,” Curtin said.
Wagner’s equalizer came off a brilliant hit from the top of the box off a set piece. It was a perfectly executed play that shifted all the momentum in favor of the Union.
The Atlanta-leaning persuasion on social media tried to claim than Nathan Harriel’s throw was not legal in the buildup to the goal, but that was quashed pretty quickly by just reading the rules.
The match got a little frantic after Wagner’s goal because of Atlanta’s desperation for a win and the Union sensing opportunity for a win.
It got lost in the shuffle of the disallowed goal, but the Union failing to score on a 5-on-1 breakaway in the second half was the most egregious soccer error of the match.
You can be frustrated with the disallowed goal, or the decision to end the game while the Union possessed the ball on the right wing, but the club actually had chances to come away with three points.
In the big picture, the draw works because you’re supposed to win the majority of your home games and road points are an extra boost in MLS.
Nine of the Union’s 13 MLS points have come on the road. Only the LA Galaxy’s 10 road points are better in the 29-team league.
The Union sit in third in the East, two points back of Inter Miami and the New York Red Bulls, and they’ve played the second-fewest amount of home games in MLS.
Anyone would have signed up for that type of points haul when the schedule was released and now it puts the Union in terrific shape to snatch points in a run of four of five at home where the only road trip is to Washington, D.C.
photo courtesy of Philadelphia Union.