Ange Postecoglou expressed his frustration with the constant VAR interventions in the headline-making match where Tottenham suffered their first Premier League defeat of the season to rival Chelsea.
Postecoglou found it perplexing that there is a persistent pursuit of a “utopia of no wrong decisions.”
Tottenham got an early lead against Chelsea with Dejan Kulusevski’s goal, and they could have been 2-0 ahead in the opening 15 minutes had Son Heung-min’s goal not been disallowed for offside.
Moises Caicedo’s excellent left-footed strike was also ruled out for offside, and Raheem Sterling had a goal disallowed. However, Chelsea benefited from VAR when Cristian Romero was penalized for a dangerous tackle on Enzo Fernandez, leading to his red card and a penalty awarded to Chelsea, which Cole Palmer converted to level the score. This decision-making process took several minutes and left players waiting for the game to resume.
The second half saw more drama as Destiny Udogie received a second yellow card and was sent off, with Chelsea eventually winning 4-1 after breaking through Tottenham’s high defensive line.
Postecoglou, in his post-game comments, emphasized that he was raised to respect the authority of referees and accept their decisions, even though managers often seek ways to work around the rules. He also criticized the intense scrutiny of every incident in modern football and argued that the pursuit of a perfect world of refereeing is unrealistic.
“No, but I think it’s going to become the norm. It’s where the game’s heading,” Postecoglou said, asked if he’d ever been involved in a game as crazy. “Unfortunately it’s how we’re going to have to watch and participate in football from now on because…look I’ve said it before, I don’t like it. I don’t like the standing around. I don’t like the whole theatre around waiting for decisions.
“But I know that I’m in the wilderness with that. I’m on my own. In my 26 years I was always prepared to accept the referee’s decisions, good, bad or otherwise, and I’ve had some shockers in my career let me tell you. I’ve had some go my way as well but I cop that because I just want the game to be played.
“When we’re complaining about decisions every week this is what’s going to happen. If people are going to forensically scrutinise everything to make sure that they’re comfortable that it’s right and even at the end of that we’re still not happy. So what does that mean? It means that we’re going to see a lot of standing around.
“I just think it’s just diminishing the authority of the referee. You can’t tell me that referees are in control of the game because they’re not. The control is outside of that but that’s the way the game is going so you have to accept that and just try to deal with it.
“I don’t know but it seems like there isn’t a great call for us to go back to accepting the referee’s decisions for the majority of it. I understand goal-line technology because that’s a simple one. That came in and no one’s complained about it.
“But in searching for this utopia of no wrong decisions in a game, that doesn’t exist. It never will but that’s the road everyone wants to go down.
“It’s self-inflicted because we all complain about decisions every week. That’s not new. We’ve been complaining about decisions…I’ve been doing this for 26 years and I’ve heard managers, me included, complaining about decisions in the past, but we’ve got on with it. We didn’t feel the need to find some miracle cure for it.
“I don’t think that that’s a viable option because we’ve opened that door, allowed the technology. Now we want transparency. I guarantee the next thing is we’ll have referees mic’ed up and explaining decisions.
“There’s plenty of other sports where you can watch referees do that. I don’t think it’s better for football, but like I said I think I’m in the wilderness with that one.”