V.A.R!

Day 12 WorldCup2018

All praise VAR. No more dreams ended by linesmen not seeing offsides, or by referees awarding nonexistent penalties. Apart from questions as to how all the referees (the main one, assistant and the VAR crew) missed Harry Kane and Aleksandar Mitovic being manhandled to the ground, VAR, has been pretty successful.

Today it added to a day of high drama and excitement. Spain were awarded a goal that had been disallowed for offside at the same time as Iran were given a penalty. Spain's goal meant they saved themselves from the embarrassment of a defeat to Morocco and Iran's penalty lead to their last minute equalizer against Portugal.

I have forever been a critic of "bad referee decisions are a part of the game" and more a supporter of "the technology exists, use it". Sure, Iran's penalty still came down to a referee making a decision based on what he saw and it was still a somewhat controversial decision, but he had the ability to make an informed decision.

But above all, what about the incredible tension and emotional rollercoasters today? Isn't that part of what makes sport something we get so drawn into? Today's VAR incidents just added to those emotions.

At the end of it all we have our first last 16 match-ups. Portugal-Uruguay on Saturday. Who else thinks that's going to be a tasty, feisty, battle to the bitter end kind of match. I don't think it will be very pretty. And Spain play Russia. Will Spain play the same way as they did in the group phase? Will they pass the ball around, and back and forth, and around and back and forth again until, hey presto, the ball ends up in their oppoents net and, hey look, don't know what happened, all that passing made us dizzy and now we are top of our group. That's crazy.

Tomorrow we'll see if Messi can get Argentina out of their mess and whether Iceland can keep the underdog dream alive.