Lines, Screens and Outrage! The Story, the Impact and the Cost of VAR
It Was What It Was : The Football History Podcast
The Overlap
4.9 • 667 Ratings
🗓️ 3 January 2025
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome back to It Was What It Was and Happy New Year!
In today’s episode, Rob Draper and Jonathan Wilson delve into the origins of VAR with author Daisy Christodoulou.
Her latest book, I Can’t Stop Talking About VAR, discusses its profound impact on the sport, and whether it was designed to enhance football - or if football is now adapting to fit VAR. The evolution of football has never felt more immediate or impactful.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to It Was What It Was. I'm Jonathan Wilson and with Rob Draper. |
| 0:10.0 | And today we're joined by a very special guest. She's the author of three highly influential books and education. |
| 0:16.0 | She's a director of education there while marking. She's Gavin Warwick to Glory on University Challenge. |
| 0:20.0 | She's a West Sam season ticket holder and crucially for're marking. She's having Warwick to glory on University Challenge. She's a |
| 0:21.0 | West Sam season ticket holder and crucially for our purposes, she's just published a book called I Can't Stop Thinking About Var. |
| 0:28.2 | So a huge welcome to Daisy Krista Dooley. Now we are a history football podcast and Var was only introduced |
| 0:35.3 | six years ago. So you're probably thinking, what are we |
| 0:37.5 | doing talking about this? But I think most of us you will probably think actually we've had |
| 0:41.7 | plenty of historical decisions through Var. And without putting words into Daisy's mouth, |
| 0:46.1 | I think she would argue that it has had a huge historical impact on the game. Daisy, is that |
| 0:53.0 | correct? Talk us through your view on VAR. Yeah, definitely. So it's had a huge impact on the game. Daisy, is that correct? Talk us through your view on VAR. Yeah, definitely. |
| 0:56.0 | So it's had a huge impact on the game. And I also think it's, when you view it in the long |
| 1:01.4 | view, inside of the game's history, that's really interesting too. Because one of the points I'm |
| 1:06.0 | making the book is that what's happening with VAR is it's an attempt to graft a technological version of the |
| 1:13.0 | games rules on top of the original rules, which are essentially 19th century. So you're trying |
| 1:19.1 | to put 21st century technology on top of the 19th century rule book. And a lot of the issues you face, |
| 1:24.9 | particularly of offside, are to do with that kind of clash of histories. |
| 1:28.3 | So definitely, I think viewing in the historical perspective is really important. |
| 1:32.4 | So I think we'll come to Offside later, but should we start with handball, which is where you start the book? |
| 1:36.6 | I think your handball is there are, I mean, you contrast the spirit and the letter of the law. |
| 1:42.9 | And so you have incidents such as Terry Henri's |
| 1:45.5 | handball against its island in 2009, which is blatantly a handball, blatantly it blatantly |
... |
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