PGMOL drafts in airline pilots to help with VAR communication،
Howard Webb invited airline pilots to speak to his Premier League refereeing team last month as part of a campaign to improve communication within the VAR hub and with the referee on the pitch.
Webb, who is the head of refereeing at Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL), is looking at any measures that could help officials avoid the kind of catastrophic error that led to Luis Díaz’s goal being wrongly disallowed for offside for Liverpool at Tottenham Hotspur. .
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Pilots work in a high-pressure environment where they must make split-second decisions and communicate with other team members in the cockpit and at traffic control.
PGMOL is not the first organization to examine how pilots work for improvements. In 2013, the National Health Service turned to the airline industry to further standardize procedures and use more checklists to avoid errors. In fact, air traffic control staff made a presentation to officials 18 months ago.
Two British Airways pilots, Chris Heaven and Pete Nataraj, gave a 45-minute presentation to Select Group 1 officials — the 20 referees and 30 assistant referees who take charge of most Premier League matches — who also discussed maintaining calm in difficult situations. .
It is one of several initiatives launched by Webb to try to put an end to the high-profile errors that have dogged VAR in the Premier League. Officials from the core group have also attended fortnightly workshops at Stockley Park, working on a number of sticking points, such as when is the right time for VAR to intervene and notify the referee that he has committed a foul? error.
The protocol was tightened after Díaz’s mistake, and Webb intensified his long-term goal of hiring VAR specialists by advertising the position.
Wolverhampton Wanderers boss Gary O’Neil was furious last month when VAR failed to overturn a penalty awarded to his team at Newcastle United. Although this was identified as a clear case where VAR intervention was necessary, Wolves conceded an almost identical penalty a week later when Sheffield United scored a stoppage-time equalizer and VAR failed to respond. not yet involved.
Although only two interventions have been found to be incorrect this season, VAR has failed to correct an error on 13 occasions. Brighton & Hove Albion and Wolves are the worst affected, with three intervention failures each.
The final weekend before the international break was the most successful since the independent Key Match Incidents Panel was introduced by the Premier League to assess all major refereeing decisions during the course of a match. The five-man panel, made up of three former players or managers as well as one representative each from PGMOL and the Premier League, voted 5-0 that all 29 key decisions were correct by VAR.
However, Webb still faces an uphill battle to regain the public’s trust after the Díaz incident, and one good weekend won’t change that.
