I Can't Stop Thinking About Var

SHORTLISTED IN THE CHARLES TYRWHITT SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 2025LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR Is it football any more?'Fascinating and persuasive' The Herald‘Everyone involved in the VAR controversy should read this short, beautifully-written book and think again’ Sir Michael BarberIn 2019, the English Premier League introduced the Video Assistant Referee (VAR), a way of using technology to review and correct the on-field referee’s decisions. It’s been a disaster: players hate it, managers hate it, pundits line up to pour scorn on its decisions, and fans have coined the chant ‘it’s not football any more’ to describe its effect on the game.Almost every other sport in the world has managed to integrate technology into its decision-making process. Why is football failing so badly? Is it a special case, or have the game’s authorities got something wrong? And what does the controversy about VAR tell us about the nature of authority, rationality and technology in the 21st century?

Daisy Christodoulou is the author of three influential books about education and education technology, and has written about cricket for the Nightwatchman Quarterly. She is the Director of Education at No More Marking, a provider of online comparative judgement software which is used by over 1,500 schools to improve the way they make assessment decisions, as well as the co-author of a peer-reviewed journal article about this approach to decision-making. I Can’t Stop Thinking About VAR is her first book about football. Jonathan Wilson is a writer and broadcaster. He founded and edits the football quarterly The Blizzard, is a columnist for the Guardian and World Soccer, writes for Unherd and is a regular guest on the Football Weekly podcast.