Two issues guide the press throughout the Brasileirão, in addition, of course, to the games themselves: the tight schedule and refereeing. Each round, one of them is ahead in popular preference.
There are similarities in the two subjects: both tire and take players out of the field. One for the technical aspect, the other for the psychological one. I imagine the athlete’s mind, when he goes to the field to play in the Copa Libertadores, or the Copa do Brasil or the Brasileirão, a competition every week, with an interval of three days. And also how to accept the behavior of some referees, who work with VAR in some games and without it in others; who give consecutive fouls in a match and, in others, let the game go on; that apply card to one and not apply to another. All this is tiring.
As I talk about the calendar every now and then, today I will dedicate myself to arbitration. That does not pass a round, in the four series of the Brasileirão, immune to criticism. I’ve written several times that the field referee, since the implementation of TV cameras for broadcasting games, became the guy most watched and charged, but with the responsibility of making decisions in fractions of seconds, without any technological resource. He’s there, pointing finger pointing at a fault, while we, at home, watch and review the move that the camera insists on showing us was normal. “What a thief judge”, will soon be heard on some sofa across Brazil.
When the video referee is present in the game, the situation becomes even more tense. Because when being called to review a score, the referee already knows that his appointment generates controversy. And how not to accept what the video shows, not only for him, but for the fans? Or he will need a lot of conviction or stubbornness. It’s not a toy!
It is evident that the level of refereeing in Brazil is not excellent, but I would not say it is bad. I do see an excessive charge on top of the exposure to which the referee is placed, by the cameras and VAR. In the vast majority of games he comes out as the most talked about character in a game, even more than the players. And that’s not right. The issue draws so much attention that the CBF, which had already changed the chairman of the Arbitration Commission, now interfered in the core structure, firing the person responsible for VAR.
What will that do? Of nothing, if not to change the behavior of the video referees, but mainly that of the field referees, in order to have a standardization of the referees in the games. Much less if we continue with so much delay in defining a move observed by VAR.
As the calendar will not change, let’s hope for better days, with fairer and more assertive arbitration in the Brasileirão games.
* Sergio du Bocage is the presenter of the program No Mundo da Bola, on TV Brasil
