The referee and the replay

Video review arrived in football with a straightforward promise: fewer wrong decisions. By that measure it has largely worked. Clear errors that once decided matches are now usually corrected.

What the promise did not mention is that most decisions in football are not clear. A referee judges whether contact was enough to matter, whether an arm was in a natural position, whether an attacker was ahead by the width of a shoulder. These are judgements, not measurements, and slowing them down does not turn them into measurements. It only produces a slower judgement, made by someone who is not on the pitch.

There has also been a cost nobody priced in. A goal used to be a moment of release. Now it is a moment followed by a pause, while thousands of people wait to learn whether they are allowed to have celebrated. Several clubs have reported that crowds celebrate less, not because they care less, but because the habit of waiting has replaced the habit of shouting.

Supporters of review point out, fairly, that the alternative is accepting errors everyone can see. Nobody argues for going back. The honest conclusion is that the technology bought accuracy on a small number of decisions and spent something harder to name on all of them.

That trade is probably worth making. It is still a trade, and describing it as pure progress misses half of what happened.