VAR, Klinsmann, 50+1 - I’ll try to be brief.
I. VAR: In my opinion, the most tricky thing about the VAR is that there is an inherent (unintended) conflict between the nature of football as a sport and the purpose of VAR to make the game fairer.
The essence of the VAR is fairness, the essence of football is continuity. Both goals are irreconcilable.
Unlike AF or Rugby, where the VAR is in harmony with the nature of the game, football at its core is a continuous stream of action where an interruption is a disturbance of the orderly flow of events, a „glitch in the matrix“ if you will. Anyone who regularly watches a game of football will know how irritating it is when the game is interrupted all the time because of umpteen little fouls. Continuity, flow, coherence of action - all of this is essential to football. An ideal game of football would proceed from the first to last minute without any interruption barring the half time break.
Therefore, it is in the best interest of the game that
- there are as few interruptions as possible
- all interruptions are necessary
- all delays due to interruptions are minimised.
Unfortunately, all three of these conditions are regularly violated by the VAR. The pseudo-objective black and white approach to offside decisions adds completely unnecessary long delays to the game when in reality a half centimeter „advantage“ of a player doesn’t make the least bit of difference on the pitch.
The corruption of the handball rule in the interest of ‚video reviewability‘ is a travesty. This is an example of a rule whose burden of proof was perfectly fine (intent, purpose) before it was artificially contorted to suit the
need of „objectification“ during a video review (specific hand positions, specific hand -> goal constellations etc.). And all this dubious „progress“ has come at the cost of numerous long delays that violate the inherent flow of football and which nobody needs and is happy with.
I have been a fan and staunch defender of the VAR - and still am - but the way it’s used now and what it does to the game of football is a total disgrace.
II. Klinsmann: I believe you have given him a little bit of short shrift as a coach on the show. He never was and never will be the greatest tactician or most advanced training methodologist - and he knows that. That’s why he assembles such a big staff of functional experts around himself everywhere he goes. Klinsmann is more of a manager in the American sense than a typical German coach. At Hertha, for example, tactical input and training organisation will come from Alexander Nouri and Markus Feldhoff, Arne Friedrich will be a link between team and management, and I’m sure he already has other experts for athletic conditioning and fitness in place as well or bring them in shortly. I think Klinsmann’s approach to football as an American style manger rather than a traditional European coach is a perfectly valid one. If you want to criticise him, you could question his selection of Nouri and Feldhoff as his main coaches. I don’t know these guys well enough to judge whether they are tactically and methodologically up to the task of a Bundesliga coach, but we’ll see.
Apart from his coaching credentials, Klinsmann finally is the ‚big city‘ name that the ‚big city‘ club Hertha so desperately needed. For this reason alone, his appointment has been a coup. You shouldn’t underestimate Klinsmann’s appeal in the American and English markets. Hertha BSC will receive a huge boost in popularity abroad in the coming weeks and months. And if they manage to perform well - who knows? Maybe the name „Klinsmann“ will help Hertha tap into a new slice of (foreign) players who’d never have considered moving there before.
III. 50+1: The guests on the show serve the same conventional narrative as all opponents of abolishing 50+1 do. The big clubs will attract all the money and become even bigger while the small ones will fall even further behind.
However, the reality is that there already is a huge gap between a select few top clubs and all the rest in the Bundesliga.
Excluding transfers, Bayern’s revenue 2018/19 has been at ca. €650m, ahead of Dortmund in second with €320m, and Schalke in third with €250m. On the show it was mentioned that Mainz’s revenue was at a little bit above €100m and Augsburg’s slightly below €100m.
These are the dimensions we’re talking about. Bayern’s revenue excluding transfers is already roughly twice as high as Dortmund’s and 2.5 times that of Schalke, not to mention all the other clubs.
And this gap is not only widening year after year, it is also structurally unassailable the way money flows in football (mainly due to mutually reinforcing effects of consistent CL participation and international popularity, details here: Schlusskonferenz 216 – #25).
All empirical evidence clearly shows that if this is ever going to change, it will only happen in a world not with but without 50+1, because that’s the only way smaller clubs can obtain the substantial funds they need quickly and sustainably enough to be able to make up the structural disadvantage to the big clubs.
I know you won’t like this, but it’s the reality. And reality is sometimes harsh.