FOOTBALL has been ever-present in my life for more than 40 years, watching, playing and coaching, so it was a dream come true to see a live game at the Maracana – a stadium built primarily for the 1950 World Cup, when the final was watched by nearly 200,000 football-mad spectators.
Brazil lost that game 2-1 to Uruguay in a time when a draw would have seen them lift the famous trophy.
Fast forward to October 2026, the attendance was a meagre 60,000, but the atmosphere was like nothing I have ever witnessed before, in any country.
These people are built differently, their passion, pride and loyalty to their club is simply amazing – Flamengo is the most supported club in Brazil with more than 46 million fans.
While sat in your seat watching the game, you can purchase a beer, a soft drink, popcorn and even the latest craze, Acai, with not one bit of violence or drunken behaviour witnessed, before, during or after the game.
You know what else we didn’t see? VAR.
It was available to the officials but – despite a very dubious penalty being awarded in the 96th minute – it wasn’t used.
Why not? Well, because it is being used for exactly the purpose it was sold to us in the UK – obvious errors.
Now, I was in the minority of the crowd who believed the decision was harsh, but nevertheless the referee was clear in his view, so there wasn’t even a suggestion of anyone checking anything on the monitor.
The result was a penalty to the home team that was subsequently converted, and the most joyous scenes I have witnessed at a football game in my time watching football – euphoria on a level we could never replicate in the UK.
But we wouldn’t ever get the opportunity, as I have no doubt that if the game been played in the UK, a reason would have been found – through slow re-run after slow re-run – to overturn the official’s decision.
The experience would have been spoiled for me, my son and 60,000 ecstatic Flamengo fans – thanks to the suits who stole the game from the working classes and forced their ideas of modern football on us.
These historical moments and many like it are being ruined.
The spontaneity of jubilant occasions, destroyed by the perverse dreams of tech companies who have been handed power, without any care for what we, the fans, want, without consultation and absolutely destroying our beautiful game.
In this modern age, in which technology appears to be the solution to everything, we are being told this is the answer.
Some people argue that VAR is here to stay so we should get used to it, but football isn’t always black and white – it’s emotive, subjective and that’s why it is so popular.
One person’s idea of how the sport should be played will vary hugely from another’s, as too will interpretations of decisions made during games.
Decisions should often be contentious – we should not be handing them over to machines – it is ruining football as a spectacle and removing emotion completely.
I know I have the support of Wayne Rooney on this matter.
I accept there will be arguments that VAR and other technology have reduced errors but ask yourself the question, at what cost?
Is this the world you want to live in? Is this technocratic era of reducing us all to robotic mannerisms the future and if so, do you recall who asked for it and more importantly, who voted for it? Has democracy abandoned us on this, too?
This new era will stupefy humans. We are seeing this already with human officials who now appear incapable of making their own decisions, all too often asking for affirmation from colleagues in rooms miles away that they’ve made the correct decision.
This is making them less confident and , crucially, less trusted. It will be their downfall and will eventually lead to them being replaced completely when the latest snake oil salesman tells the powers that be that they have even more tech to sell them, where humans are not needed and decisions are a desirably high percentage correct.
I bet that sounds familiar to us all as we see AI and tech put us all on hyper-alert about our own jobs.
Can you tell this article wasn’t written with the help of AI? What is the solution?
Well, sadly, the answer, is to vote with your feet. Boycott a game, fight back and show the powers that be that we do not want a tech solution for every problem and that our beautiful game does not belong to them. It is and always will be ours.
The breakaway super league, Gianni Infantino and others have seen the power of fans when they collectively come together, so do it before you barely recognise the game or world you are living in.
Football is 1-0 down, away from home, with 10 players.
Whether or not it can escape with a lucky draw or even sneak a win is down to us.
