This is not just a blog post. Some may not see this as a measured opinion.
But – this is a cry.
A cry from the terraces, a cry from the pub, a cry from every living room where a supporter dares to believe.
I am done.
Done with VAR. Done with the PGMOL. Done with IFAB. Done with this clinical mutilation of the game I love.
Once, I gazed toward Europe with a hopeful heart. In the glow of Champions League lights, I saw a semblance of order: automated offsides, decisive refereeing, a rhythm not entirely lost.
But even there—still—this disease crept in.
The semi-final against Paris-SG… oh, the handball! A decision so ludicrous it defied language. Lewis-Skelly—a tragedy in boots, reduced to farce.
This, dear reader, is not oversight.
It is a pandemic.
A plague upon our sport, and I do not say that lightly.
A Beautiful Game, Butchered by Bureaucracy
Football was once theatre. It was drama. It was poetry, chaos, jazz.
Now it is bureaucracy. A forensic crime scene of frozen frames and tortured laws.
VAR is not the guardian of fairness—it is the executioner of joy.
The laws were meant to wrap around football with love, with care.
Instead, they have become a noose.
A goal goes in—once, it was euphoria. Now? Hesitation. Fear.
Five, six, seven seconds pass… and still we wait.
You dare not celebrate, for the ghost of a fingernail or a phantom foul might have occurred three phases ago.
What once was a scream is now a murmur.
And when the goal is finally given, we are offered the consolation prize of the secondary celebration—an encore no one asked for.
It is sterile. It is soulless. It is wrong.
Even the clearest onside run—the type that once brought crowds to their feet—can be stolen away.
The flag stays down. The whistle stays away.
But then…
The referee carves a rectangle in the air.
Time stands still.
A millimetre. A strand of hair. A suggestion of handball.
And so we rewind. Freeze frame. Frame by frame. Again.
In a game built on rhythm, on instinct, on flow—we are now trapped in a still life.
This is not football.
This is surveillance.
It is Orwellian, clinical, and utterly joyless.
I believe in fairness. I really do.
If there is malice in a challenge—pull it back.
If an offside is egregious—call it.
But let the game breathe.
Let us debate in the pub, let us argue in the stands, let us howl with righteous indignation on a Monday morning.
That was football.
It was organic. It was flawed. It was glorious.
The old saying—it always evens out over the season.
That, too, was part of the magic.
When the Rules Betray the Game
Jesus wept…
How few the moments in football’s long, glorious story that truly altered its trajectory—how rare the incidents that etched themselves into eternity.
Maradona’s Hand of God… a crime wrapped in divinity.
Lampard’s phantom “goal” against Germany… a ghost that still haunts English dreams.
And yet—those, we remember. They were controversy laced with myth. They were the imperfect brushstrokes on football’s masterpiece.
But now? Now the canvas is sterilised.
We had a problem—is it over the line or isn’t it?
And we solved it.
A chip in the ball, a flicker of light on the goal line. It was truth. Unarguable. Absolute.
Yes or no.
No debate, no delay.
Goal-line technology was the triumph of precision. And it worked.
It was football and technology shaking hands, not strangling each other.
But VAR?
VAR is not that. VAR is a Rubik’s Cube in the fog. A jigsaw made of jelly.
I have watched this game since I was six. I’m a few years past 40 now—a veteran of a thousand battles across screens and stands.
And yet today, I cannot explain the rules to my children.
Not because they’ve changed—but because they’ve disappeared.
Handball… offside… serious foul play… all eroded.
The lines, once clear, now run like ink in the rain.
Once, I could use salt and pepper shakers to explain offside. Now, I need a legal team and a digital telestrator.
We have phases of play, layers of intention, nuances of malice and momentum.
You can hack someone down and be fine—if it wasn’t quite nasty enough.
You can graze a wrist in the buildup and see a world-class goal struck from the record.
It’s no longer interpretation—it’s theatre of the absurd.
Across the country, fury brews in the soul of the supporter.
Decisions are overturned. Red cards rescinded. Matches paused like broken downloads.
And for what?
We were promised “clear and obvious.”
Instead, we wait six minutes to decipher a striker’s toenail.
If you need to draw a line to decide it—then it wasn’t obvious.
We moved the goalposts. We renamed linesmen to assistants, we redefined fouls into philosophies.
And I am no dinosaur.
Change is inevitable. Evolution is right.
But this is mutation.
This is Frankenstein’s football.
My father once told me, “In my day, you’d have gotten away with that.”
And yes, it was rougher, rawer, more real.
But now? It’s gone so far the other way, it’s almost unrecognisable.
To me, it feels like a different sport.
To him, it may as well be an alien language—which is probably why he’s switched to rugby.
And here’s the cruel irony: every other sport has cracked it.
Tennis—in or out.
Rugby—ref mics, clarity, respect.
Cricket—technology that speaks to the crowd.
In every arena, technology is a tool, not a tyrant.
But football?
Football has become a mystery only the couch-bound fan can solve.
Inside the ground, the people it was built for—the lifeblood, the soul—they know the least.
VAR in its current fallible format is not the answer.
It is the question that never ends.
Football Was Never Meant to Be This
Like I said…
This was never meant to be a post.
There’s no structure here—just rage. Exhaustion. A love letter turned eulogy.
Because I am angry. I am heartbroken.
And I’m tired.
This game… our game… it’s being ruined. Slowly, deliberately, with a thousand little cuts.
Football is the greatest sport on Earth. I know I’m biased—but it’s not bias when it’s true.
It’s played on every street corner, in every war zone, across deserts and frozen parks and flooded pitches.
With one leg, with no sight, with wheelchairs and prosthetics—people still find a way to play.
Why?
Because it’s beautiful. Because it belongs to everyone.
It’s ours.
Corporate giants pour billions into it. Nations build temples just to host it.
Not because they love the purity of the game—but because football pulls.
It captures hearts and minds in a way no spreadsheet or sales pitch ever could.
And yet the rules—the rules—are slipping through our fingers.
Every week, another tweak.
Every match, another contradiction.
Handball today is not handball tomorrow.
A tackle that gets a cheer on Saturday gets a suspension on Sunday.
Offside is now a geometry lesson—with no right answer.
Interpretation? It’s guesswork.
There is no line in the sand anymore—just blur. Chaos disguised as order.
And I sit there, with my 11-year-old lad…
And he turns to me and asks, “Was that offside, Dad?”
And I haven’t got a clue.
“Was that a foul?”
I don’t know, son. Maybe? Possibly? It depends what mood the referee’s in—or what mood Stockley Park is in.
That used to be part of the fun. The debate.
But now?
Now it’s a migraine.
We’ve weaponised technology. We’ve turned screens into snipers, freeze-frames into firing squads.
We slow every move down to the inch, the twitch, the blink.
And we forget—football is not a still image. It’s a moving, breathing, violent ballet.
It’s chaos. It’s instinct. It’s art.
But now we’re demanding robots.
Defenders with arms stapled to their backs like mannequins.
Players afraid to tackle in case they make headlines for the wrong angle.
You can’t play naturally anymore. You can’t move freely.
You’re not playing football—you’re performing a VAR-friendly pantomime.
This isn’t the game we fell in love with.
This isn’t what the game was meant to be.
And sure, some advancements have been brilliant.
Goal-line tech? Perfect. It works.
But the rest… the rest is being wielded like a weapon by those who’ve never played a minute.
And if they don’t fix it—if the powers that be don’t rein this madness in—then this game might be lost.
At least to my generation.
We’re already watching people flee to the lower leagues—to Maidenhead United, to Boreham Wood, to Ebbsfleet.
To where the big brother eye doesn’t hover over every pass and tackle.
Where football still breathes.
And one day, if this carries on, we’ll all go back.
Where it is all stripped back down.
No lines. No replays. No wires and booths and delays.
Just grass, boots, and heart.
And when we do…
You can fill your stadiums with hospitality seats and tourists.
And you will finally have succeeded in ripping the very soul from football.
and we can all get back to the game we fell in love with.
And we’ll give a big, unapologetic double digit V salute.
to the Premier League, to UEFA, and to FIFA—
because you are the ones killing the game.
Victoria Concordia Crescit