Welcome, everyone to soccer 101. My name is Taylor Rockwell, and this week we're looking at a modern aspect of soccer that isn't at all controversial and has never created headaches of any kind. It's VAR. What is it? How does it work? How does it differ between leagues? Why don't some people like it? And much, much more. Joining me to discuss those and several other topics is a man who always loves watching people draw imaginary rectangles. It's Graham Ruffin. Hello, Graham.

Hello, Taylor Rockwell. Yes, I enjoy it just as much as Eric Ten Hagg does. Nobody tell him that

there is actually Hawkeye technology applying those lines. He thinks it is just someone with a crayon,

putting it onto a camera angle. And I quite like the blissful ignorance. So nobody tell them, actually. I've

decided to change my mind. We are recording this on September 6th of 2020. If you're listening to

this five years from now, hopefully the Earth is still here. Hopefully, VAR is still a talking

point. It means that we're doing okay. But yes, this is, Graham is referencing Eric Tenhoag

in Manchester's lost to Arsenal this past weekend.

And that felt to me going off topic immediately, a bit like the old school Arson-Venger of like

be really mad at the officials and address things that didn't like matter at all to the game

so that that becomes the talking point and no one focuses on your team losing.

In that way,

I think Eric Ten Haag did a good job of sort of deflecting a lot of the criticism that would have come by making himself look a little bit like a lunatic. Yeah, absolutely. So it's a solid

ploy from Eric Ten Haig to turn the focus to the officials, even if they don't deserve it,

as they didn't after the Arsenal defeat. And especially, I think, when you're blaming VAR and the frustrations with VAR.

I do feel like that's gone away a little bit, but certainly in the early days of VAR,

there was more, I think, acceptance of like, this doesn't make sense and when Football Weekly,

and maybe our show, we're spending every weekend talking at least like for like a couple minutes about was that right was that

correct why was that v aar decision given it has sort of been the aspect of v a r that i least enjoy

that it is it is meant to remove a lot of the subjectivity from the game and instead we just get

very very debatey about what is and isn't meant to be v a r and if the air got it right but graham we're going to hold that for now instead let's just go with the very basics what is and isn't meant to be VAR and if VAR got it right. But, Graham, we're

going to hold that for now. Instead, let's just go with the very basics. What is VAR? For people

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