And the award for taking the fun out of the beautiful game goes to…Premier League refs’ inability to use VAR correctly.

Here’s the thing, proper football/soccer is a sport about feel and drama. The use, or misuse, of VAR simply sucks the life out of the sport. Measuring millimeters through the sideline cameras and 3D rotations to see where the attacker’s toes were cut the game down to battles of nuance.

For a game that allows 3 minutes of extra time to, on occasion, run into 4-minute territory, VAR is a slap of the hand with a wooden ruler. The more football associations leverage the technology over the feel of on-field refs, the more they drain the life out of the game.