As the Swedish league got underway this spring, yellow-and-black-clad supporters of Stockholm club AIK held up an enormous banner containing a long, vivid story about the dark forces of modern soccer conquering the world.
“The whole world? No!” read the words on the giant display.
“There was, in fact, a small area that successfully resisted the intruders, surrounded by modern football’s smoldering ruins.”
The intruder in this case is VAR — the high-tech video review system formally written into the laws of soccer in 2018 to help referees make the right calls in the biggest moments.
While most leagues around the world are now using this technology, Sweden is an outlier in holding out and, in its view, retaining the game in its purest form.
The Swedish league is the only one of Europe’s top-30 ranked leagues yet to have rolled out the system. It won’t be happening anytime soon, either.
“VAR is a symbol of modern, commercialized-to-the-point-of-destruction football,” says Ola Thews, vice-chairman of AIK’s largest supporter organization, ASK.
Thews is more than just a die-hard AIK fan. He played a part in mobilising anti-VAR sentiment among Sweden’s top clubs and helped push through a motion at AIK opposing the introduction of the technology, before the Swedish soccer federation had the chance to bring it in.
That’s possible because Swedish clubs are majority-controlled by members — essentially, supporters — under a regulation that states members should control at least 50% of their club’s shares, plus one.
Although the federation initially appeared to want VAR in operation — the technology is, after all, used at European and international level — it will not go against the wishes of its member-run clubs. As a result, the federation has held off on further discussions about adopting VAR and said last week it doesn’t envisage any in the foreseeable future.
That’s a big win for Swedish match-going fans who are proud of their rebel status in European soccer.
No VAR. No out-of-touch American owners or oil money from the Middle East. A culture where fans matter.
Soccer as it should be, in their view.
VAR “ruins the euphoria” that soccer can bring, Thews says. “The absolute happiness and passion, or grief and sadness, that comes from a goal being conceded or a goal being scored if you’re not sure what has happened until it has been reviewed and decided in a VAR room.”
Compared to other sports, soccer is a latecomer to video replays. In the United States, the NFL introduced instant replays in the mid-1980s but scrapped the system in 1991 after widespread discontent. They returned in 1999 and have spread to other major North American leagues and international sports, such as cricket and rugby.
In soccer, pausing for video reviews can appear more disruptive. Not least because the VAR system has its imperfections.
In the English Premier League, a communications mix-up between the official running the video review and the on-field referee cost Liverpool a valid goal in a loss at Tottenham in October. Weeks later, a Tottenham-Chelsea match had a total of 21 minutes of stoppage time added on largely because of a raft of video reviews.
Earlier this month, Nottingham Forest put out an inflammatory statement, questioning the integrity of a match official, after being denied what it perceived to be three clear penalty shouts overlooked by the video referee.
In Spain, Barcelona threatened legal action to force a replay after a VAR-related controversy in the recent “clasico” against Real Madrid.
