{"id":488,"date":"2019-07-05T09:21:35","date_gmt":"2019-07-05T09:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/?p=488"},"modified":"2019-07-05T09:26:31","modified_gmt":"2019-07-05T09:26:31","slug":"trying-to-make-soccer-a-science-video-assistant-referee-and-the-elusive-technocratic-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/?p=488","title":{"rendered":"Trying to Make Soccer a “Science”: Video Assistant Referee and the Elusive Technocratic Dream"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The most important factor determining\nwho wins or loses in the 2019 Women\u2019s World Cup under way in France is not a\nsoccer player, but a piece of technology. VAR, or Video Assistant Referee, is a\nvideo review system in which the referee can replay incidents in the match, and\nsubsequently change the call on the field after review. It is easy for referees\nto miss flagrant infractions in real time, so VAR is there to ensure that something\nlike the \u201chand of God<\/a>,\u201d\nDiego Maradona\u2019s infamous goal with his hand, cannot occur again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In reality, however, VAR has made\nrefereeing decisions more controversial, not less. In the first-round game between\nSpain and South Africa, a South African defender cleared the ball and play\ncontinued. No foul was called, nor was there any reason to suspect there was a\nfoul; yet whoever was monitoring video replays alerted the referee to a\npotential incident and encouraged the referee to consult VAR instant replay. The\ndefender had cleared the ball and fallen backwards, and during the follow-through\nof her kick her cleats came off the ground. The Spanish forward ran into the\ndefender\u2019s cleats as she fell backward; upon reviewing the detailed replays\nover and over, the referee judged this to have been a \u201cstuds-up\u201d tackle, awarded\na penalty kick to Spain, and gave the defender a yellow card (her second),\nwhich sent her off the field and left South Africa with only 10 players. It\nchanged the tide of the game, and South Africa, which had been leading for most\nof the game, never recovered and left the tournament without scoring another\ngoal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As someone watching the game live on\ntelevision, this call seemed extremely questionable; yet it turned out to\nprecipitate a series of ever-more problematic VAR-influenced results. In the\ngame between Jamaica and Italy, the Jamaican goalkeeper made a fantastic\npenalty kick save\u2014only to have it called back by VAR for having come off of her\nline too early. (The retaken kick went in.) The same happened in the game\nbetween France and Nigeria, but this one was even more consequential: France\nscored on the retaken penalty kick, won the game 1-0, and knocked Nigeria out\nof the tournament. Scotland faced a near-identical fate: a saved penalty was\ncalled back, the retake went in, and Argentina eliminated the Scots. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal-line infractions were so\nminiscule as to be impossible to spot in the flow of the game, and only barely\nnoticeable on video replay. Referees have turned a blind eye to far\nmore egregious violations of the rule<\/a> in the past, such as the\nWomen\u2019s World Cup finals of 1999. Nor would it be a consensus view among soccer\nplayers, or even referees, to think that a post-clearance collision should be\nconsidered a studs-up tackle. VAR caused such headaches in the opening rounds\nthat FIFA decided to change\nthe rules in the middle of the tournament,<\/a> realizing that the VAR-enabled\nstringent enforcement of penalty kick rules were likely to throw the game into\nturmoil during penalty kick shootouts in the knockout rounds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

VAR is the distillation of the modern\ntechnocratic vision to blame human error for society\u2019s ills and believe that\nthe answer lies in replacing the human element of judgment with automated,\nscientific tools. If we are just able to use more advanced technology, the\nthinking goes, human error will dissipate and what will be left is something\n\u201cpure,\u201d untainted by uncertainty or individual judgment. It is the same logic\nof Frederick Taylor\u2019s scientific management of workers to optimize and\nrationalize human labor, to reduce gray areas with objective, scientific, and\nstandardized facts. The referee\u2014the sine qua non of poor human judgment, in the\neyes of any sports fan\u2014should be rendered irrelevant, replaced by a machine unfettered\nby the burdens of head or heart. Technology now allows us to make this switch\nfrom human to machine, to replace the whims of individual referees with the\nunfeeling science of a machine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The desire to avoid disastrous\nrefereeing blunders is well-intentioned, but VAR has once again shown the\nlimits of technology in the fundamentally messy realm of human affairs. Soccer,\nlike any human creation, cannot be reduced to a set of stackable,\ninterchangeable building blocks that can be scientifically maximized. Bringing\nin technology does not eliminate human error; rather, it makes it much more\nobvious that soccer is, at its core, human judgment all the way down. It\nprovides more information, but more information in no way guarantees the\nresulting judgment to be any more \u201cscientific\u201d or \u201cfactual\u201d than the original\ncall. <\/p><\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

VAR highlights two problems with the\ntechnocratic vision, in this case as applied to soccer. For many refereeing\ndecisions, the rules themselves are ambiguous, and even the most precise\ntechnological instruments could never eliminate the need for human judgment. For\nother issues, the rules may be relatively clear, but how strictly a referee\nshould adhere to the text of the rules as written, rather than the context in\nwhich the game is being played, also requires some level of human judgment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take, for example, a handball. The\nofficial soccer rules for a handball state that it \u201cinvolves a deliberate act\nof a player making contact with the ball with the hand or arm.\u201d What makes\nsomething \u201cdeliberate?\u201d Except in the most extreme cases, no soccer player\nwould use their hand on purpose: thus, basically all<\/em> handballs are \u201cnot deliberate.\u201d Given this, the standard rule\nfor judging a handball rests on the natural\/unnatural distinction. If a\nplayer\u2019s arm is in a natural position and is hit by the ball, it is not a\nhandball; only if the player\u2019s arm is in an unnatural position, such as stuck\nfar out from their body, can a handball be called. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Supreme Court, stocked with\nhighly trained lawyers and judges, has struggled for centuries to define the\nword \u201cdeliberate.\u201d Philosophers have debated for centuries the meaning of the\nword \u201cnatural.\u201d I\u2019ve met plenty of awkwardly shaped people in my life\u2014I\u2019m\nrelated to some of them\u2014and I can assure you that their natural arm position is\nvery different than my own. It is obviously impossible to scientifically or\nobjectively determine what is a handball: no matter how we parse the rules, or\nthe interpretations of the rules, at the end of the day it is an exercise in\nhuman judgment. Without VAR, the referees will have to make a number of\ndifficult handball calls throughout the game; with VAR, the referees still have\nto do the same thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same logic applies to any foul,\nsuch as the falling-backward-but-cleat-stuck-upward clearance attempt. VAR does\nnot even do much to help referees call offsides, which is notoriously tricky to\ncatch in real time: even if VAR can help determine whether a person was in an\noffsides position when the ball was kicked, it does nothing to decide whether\nother players in an offsides position were involved in the play (this\ndetermination cost Cameroon a goal in the quarterfinals versus England). The\nonly issue that can be determined most of the time with any \u201cscientific\u201d\naccuracy is judging simply whether the ball has fully crossed the goal line.\nThere is no ambiguity in the rules: all the way over is a goal, not all the way\nover is not. Only the metaphysicians would disagree, and thankfully they rarely\nenjoy fun things like sports anyways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet even if only a more \u201cobjective\u201d\ninfraction like whether the ball crossed the goal line is subject to VAR\nreview, there are likely myriad other reasons why the goal should be\ndisallowed: when a bunch of awkwardly shaped human beings run at full speed,\nyou are likely to find plenty of actions that are not perfectly in accordance\nwith the rules. Violations of the rules as written are near-incessant, and\nreferees\u2014like any human being in a rule-governed society\u2014are constantly making micro-level\njudgments of what to call and what to allow. The space between rules as written\nand human lives as lived is where much of modern life takes place. Other sports\nimplementing video review discovered long ago that true accuracy would render\nthe game simply unplayable; in response, they fashioned new rules to limit the\nscope of when video review could be used. Yet only sometimes<\/em> using video review renders any patina of true scientific\naccuracy farcical. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may be true that a\npartial-science is helpful for the overall sport, and sometimes instant replay\ncatches flagrant violations of the rules that referees simply missed. The \u201cassistant\u201d\nin Video Assistant Referee is supposed to suggest that the video review is a\nsupplement to, not a replacement for, the judgment of the human referee; as VAR\nsupporters might argue, it is merely a source of more information, from which\nthe referee can further exercise their human judgment. But the very act of\nreviewing a call removes a sense of the natural autonomy of the referee that\nflows from the pace of the game. Even when there are clear restrictions, as in\nthe case of a goalkeeper leaving the goal line a second before the penalty kick\nis taken, whether to strictly enforce the \u201cletter of the law\u201d is one of the many\njudgments that a referee is making throughout the game. The pace of the game,\nand the human ability to miss things, gives the referee the autonomy to judge\nhow to interpret the rules in the way that keeps the game fair while also\nproceeding smoothly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When an incident goes to VAR review,\nthe referee no longer has the autonomy to not make a call, even on the smallest\ninfraction. When the magnifying glass highlights the moment itself, any normal\ndirt that wouldn\u2019t normally be noticed now sticks out to even the most squalid\nhouseguest. The video \u201cassistant\u201d referee becomes the one who wields the real\npower, while the referee on the pitch is reduced to a mere assistant. VAR takes\naway the ability of the referee to not make calls, and forces them to enforce a\ncertain vision of soccer as a pedantic game in which the rules are the letter\nof the law. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even FIFA had to acknowledge that\nsuch a vision of soccer is untenable: if the rules are sacrosanct, and any\nsmall infringement of them must be penalized, what explanation is there for rewriting\nthe rules in the middle of the tournament? FIFA officials are shifting power\naway from individual referees and toward themselves, a group of managers\nsitting in executive offices. They are claiming the power to make judgments\nabout which rules should be enforced, and which should be ignored, rather than\nleaving that judgment to the referee on the field. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What VAR has done, then, is feed\ninto the illusion that we can eliminate human error. It obscures the fact that\nbehind VAR is still human judgment. Someone is looking at that screen and\nmaking a judgment call, or pushing us to play by the rules and then changing\nthem to fit their vision. Instead of that person running around the pitch, the\nperson exercising the power of their judgment is behind a screen somewhere in\nthe bowels of the stadium, or cheering in a business suit from a well-manicured\nsuite high above the action. Human judgment can be obscured but not eliminated;\npower can be put behind closed doors and taken away from the man or woman in\nuniform, but it can never be given to some fanciful idea of human-free science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem with shifting power from\nthe referee to external FIFA referee teams or officials is not that the referee\nis sacrosanct or particularly good at their job. The problem lies in the\nprivate, opaque nature of the power of VAR. The political philosopher Thomas\nHobbes, a fierce critic of scientists, saw a similar issue among 18th<\/sup>\ncentury proponents of the scientific method. As Simon Schaffer and Steven\nShapin explain in Leviathan and the\nAir-Pump, <\/em>Hobbes\u2019s problem with Robert Boyle\u2019s experiments about vacuums\nwas in the anti-democratic nature of scientific fact-making. Boyle claimed\nscientific facts when multiple different scientists could agree that\nexperimental evidence showed a fact, but Hobbes saw the use of fancy\nexperiments as a way of monopolizing authority in the hands of a small group of\nprivate scientists. No regular person could have access to the complex\nlaboratories where experiments took place; the result was that the\ndetermination of what was a fact and what was not became separated from the\npeople at large. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hobbes\u2019s critique is relevant to modern\nsoccer: the presence of the referee on the field, at the very least, is a\npublic spectacle, taking place in the open and for all to see. We, the\nparticipants and viewers, agree to entrust to the referee the task of\nadjudicating this game to the best of their ability, despite knowing that some\nbad calls might be made. VAR, on the other hand, exists in private; it takes\nthe power away from the open pitch and into the background, where secret\ndeterminations are made. Sometimes these will be based on more evidence than\nthe existing claim. But the agreement is broken; the power invested in the\nreferee is fatally reduced; and what is left is, more often than not, a set of\nprivate, unaccountable actors, hidden behind the smokescreen of technology,\nenforcing their own human judgments onto those of everyone else. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The technocratic vision is often\nensconced in good intentions, and the introduction of VAR to the game of soccer\nis no exception. We have failed again, however, to think through the limits of\ntechnology as applied to the human endeavor, whether it is flourishing in\nsociety or trying to clear the ball out of your own 18-yard box. Technology\ndoes not reduce the need for individual judgment, it merely shifts it, often\nfrom out in the open to somewhere in the shadows. The struggle to balance the\npower that comes from science, advanced technology, or a claim to specialized\nknowledge of some sort is among the questions lurking behind modern society\nsince the time of Hobbes, Boyle, and the air-pump experiments. The result of\ntrying to replace humans with technology, as we have seen in this year\u2019s\nWomen\u2019s World Cup, is something that feels distinctly inhuman. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The most important factor determining who wins or loses in the 2019 Women\u2019s World Cup under way in France is not a soccer player, but a piece of technology. VAR, or Video Assistant Referee, is a video review system in which the referee can replay incidents in the match, and subsequently change the call on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,130],"tags":[129,131,126],"class_list":["post-488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy","category-sports","tag-technocracy","tag-thomas-hobbes","tag-var"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=488"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":499,"href":"https:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions\/499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}