VAR, the stopwatch, and belated verdicts in Vietnamese football

The stands of Hang Day Stadium, one night, a man sat still from the first minute to the 78th. He did not wave a flag or shout; he only watched the ball roll. When the referee ran to the VAR screen, he turned his eyes from the pitch to the clock under the roof. The second hand made three circles, then four, then five. Whistles rose from the stands, but the referee remained there, hand on his earpiece, like a judge searching for a 'yes' or 'no' among hundreds of pages of precedent. I looked at that man and understood: in Vietnamese football, the minutes waiting for VAR are not dead time. They are wordless trials, where truth is left on the pitch and no one dares to conclude.

VAR arrived in V-League later than in major leagues, but it arrived faster than our preparation. Vietnamese referees were used to running after the ball and deciding with their own eyes. They read a match the way a traveler reads a river: looking at the surface to gauge the depths. When VAR appeared, that river gained a map, but no one taught them how to read it. Situations once seemed clear became gray zones. Teams in this season's V-League have grown used to standing around. Players put their hands on their hips, coaches wave from the touchline, fans whistle. Some estimate that if you added all the VAR waiting time in a season, you would get an extra match lasting four days. I do not know if that is accurate, but I know those minutes are eroding the patience of those who love this sport.

I have been to many stadiums across the country, from Lach Tray to Thong Nhat, from Thien Truong to Hoa Xuan. Everywhere, the small green screen by the touchline has become the new deity of the match. Fans turn their backs on the passes; they look at the screen whenever the referee touches his ear. This state resembles a strange disease: people no longer watch football; they watch a machine inspection.

After one season, I heard many people say they missed the feeling of shouting for a goal without needing to check the eyes of those around them. Football used to be a sport of trust. Now that trust has to be encoded into pixels.

But I do not want to romanticize the past. Before VAR, matches were not necessarily fairer. People still remember the whistles that made a whole team cover their faces, matches decided by a mistaken glance. VAR was born from the betrayal of the human eye. It is not an invader but an antidote. Yet every antidote has side effects, and our current reaction is dependency. People no longer trust referees; they trust only the screen. That is a paradox: we create technology to serve people, then abandon our responsibility to it.

I once witnessed striker Nguyen Van Quyet sprint down the left wing, pass into the middle, and a teammate finish. The ball was already in the net, the stands were exploding with songs. But the small room where the VAR team operated saw it from another angle, and everything slowed down. The whistle did not come. Joy faded like a candle in the wind. A hairline offside was enough to turn a goal into a nightmare. What concerns me is not whether VAR should intervene, but the distance between human judgment and truth. An experienced referee can read a situation in half a second, but when he knows a camera is watching him, that half second stretches into three minutes. Accuracy does not increase when we wait longer; it only increases when the people running the process know where to stop.

Vietnamese referees are caught between two fires: the responsibility to decide and the fear of being scrutinized. When afraid, people usually choose safety. The first safe option is to hide behind the screen. I remember a match in central Vietnam, where the Lao wind blew hot. The main referee was a man who had run on pitches for over twenty years. He showed a yellow card, then realized he might be wrong. Instead of holding his ground, he looked at his assistant. A whole generation of referees is losing the confidence of those who once controlled a match's fate. They have become soldiers waiting for orders, and the crowd feels it.

What is more dangerous than VAR is the belief that every mistake can be fixed by technology. Technology is only an extra eye; the verdict still rests in human hands. Players like Do Hung Dung or Nguyen Quang Hai can make the same pass a thousand times, but they cannot control a situation reviewed at sixty frames per second. Football runs on error and forgiveness. VAR, as we use it, hunts for error without granting forgiveness.

At youth tournaments, where there is no VAR, referees still have to decide alone. I once watched an U15 match at a small training ground in Hanoi. The referee was a physical education teacher; a winger was fouled in the box, and the few parents present shouted. The teacher pointed to the penalty spot without hesitation. Maybe he was wrong, but he was decisive. It reminded me that football, at its lowest level, remains a game of judgment from the heart. Up in V-League, that heart is tied to wires.

People often call for limiting VAR review time, as if attaching a stopwatch to each decision. I understand their impatience, but I also see an invisible clock being attached to justice. In a courtroom, if you time the defense lawyer, would anyone dare say justice is served completely? An offside can be clarified by technology, but a collision in a duel depends on the referee's view. If we rush the clock, ambiguous moments will be pushed back to the referee, and he will choose the safest route: not what is right, but what no one can blame. So do not vent your anger at time. Look at the people running the operation. A good referee can review a situation in twenty seconds and deliver a convincing verdict. A weak referee, given three minutes, will still stand before the screen and look for an excuse.

The ball still rolls on Vietnamese pitches, under burning sun or long rain. VAR may become smarter and faster, but the question remains: do we have the courage to wait for a fair verdict, or do we only want to see what we believe is true? The applause of the stands on an empty night is louder than the sea. Injury time is a debt I owe to time, and I repay it every night. The ball rolls through my age, and I record it in verse. But one thing I know for sure: when the final whistle blows, people will forget the waiting time if the outcome is fair. They only remember what makes them cry. Justice on the pitch, perhaps, does not come from speed, but from how we look at ourselves when the ball lies still on the line.