Video-assisted shambles in Brazilian football

Welcome back to the Brazil Sports newsletter! This week, VAR troubles in the Brazilian league, with one player taking out his frustrations on a television screen. Plus, the Copa Libertadores returns: we explain the detailed safety protocols in place.

Open VAR in Brazilian football

Opinions on VAR are like football teams: everybody has one. However, no-one has made his feelings clearer on the video assistant referee system than Botafogo’s Paraguayan goalkeeper Gatito Fernández, who — after seeing his side having two goals disallowed by VAR in a 2-0 home loss to Internacional — angrily knocked over the pitchside review booth with a kick square to the monitor.

Indeed, this past weekend had more VAR than football, with a special mention for the big Sunday afternoon kick-off between Santos and Flamengo, in which two goals for the home side were ruled out in a decision-making process that took a full 10 minutes.

“Of course I regret it,” Gatito said the following morning, as the dust settled. “But we cannot have completely unprepared professionals using this technology.”

Bad workman blames his tools. Beyond the VAR complaints seen all over world football — “it ruins the flow of the game!”, “football isn’t meant to be fair!”, “it’s biased against my club!” — there is an added element to the technology in football debate in Brazil, touched on by Gatito Fernández the day after his rage quit captured live on TV. The main criticism of the system in Brazil is that the referees are not sufficiently prepared to use it.

Skipping steps. Referees...