Sky Sports' Johnny Phillips: VAR and the shame of not celebrating goals

The research suggested that the old-fashioned ‘boozing sessions’ were on their way out.

Consumption was down among young adults. No bad thing from a health perspective, but the reasons for this were quite sinister.

Young people were starting to fear that photos taken during the back end of a night on the sauce, when nobody looks their best, were appearing on friends’ Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Social media shaming was compromising the enjoyment of a night out with mates.

It continues to be an issue in society, particularly for the young generation. A spot of self-awareness is a good thing, but not when it has a psychologically darker side. Care-free nights out should be a rite of passage.

Those who put in the hard yards before the age of camera phones and social media were lucky. Nothing ever came back to haunt them.

And this is the thing with VAR. It is coming back to haunt the players now.

Pedro Neto is a teenager trying to make the breakthrough as a professional footballer.

Before arriving at Wolves in the summer he had played just a handful of senior games. The move to Molineux was his big chance. He has been a bit-part player under Nuno Espirito Santo, confined to a role off the substitutes’ bench.

At Anfield last Sunday, against the European Cup holders, World Club champions and Premier League winners-in-waiting, he was given his chance from the start. And deep into first half injury-time he thought he had scored his first ever Premier League goal.

In Pete Davies’s book about England at the 1990 World Cup – All Played Out – the author asks some of the players what it is like to score a goal.

“It’s a great feeling. For 10 seconds you just lose your head,” said Chris Waddle. Paul Gascoigne agreed. “You’re all over the place, all over the place, man. Run anywhere,” he added.

For those who have done so, there is nothing quite like the adrenaline surge and visceral euphoria of scoring a goal.

When Neto ‘scored’ for Wolves against Liverpool he absolutely lost it. Setting off on a frenzied run, his face was contorted with ecstasy, arms flailing uncontrollably. There was more than a hint of Marco Tardelli’s iconic moment about it, evoking the Italian’s famous goal celebration during the 1982 World Cup final.

On the biggest stage of his career to date, the 19-year-old Neto had shown his coach and the supporters why they should believe in him.

And then VAR intervened. What might have been a defining moment in his development was taken away from him. And the VAR protagonists are right, of course. Under the current implementation of the laws, Jonny Castro Otto was offside in the build-up. After a lengthy geometric analysis of the information available, the technology decreed that Jonny was offside, although the naked eye could never have picked up the incredibly fine margins in question.

Neto could not undo his celebration, though. It was out there. Just like the photo of the teenager snapped on a carefree night out looking a bit the worse for wear.

Sure enough, the celebration was posted on social media alongside some less than favourable comments suggesting he’d made a fool of himself. He hadn’t. He had spontaneously reacted to what he thought was the greatest moment of his professional life so far.

Neto uses social media, he may even have read the comments. It is unlikely he will ever celebrate in such an unconstrained manner again. He will hold the memory of that disallowed goal.

The Fulham manager, Scott Parker, believes we are not far away from reaching the point where strikers do not even bother celebrating.

“You’re going to get to a point, maybe in a year’s time, where a centre forward scores a goal and he’s just going to stand still and wait until he knows for sure,” said the former Chelsea midfielder, in an interview with Sky Sports this week.

“And I feel if you get to that point you lose the soul – and lose something much, much bigger than an offside decision, right or wrong. You’re losing something we all love about this game.”

In truth, for some players, we have reached that point already. Scoring at Old Trafford should be among the highlights of any footballer’s career. Yet when Tyrone Mings put the ball in the net for Aston Villa’s equaliser against Manchester United last month he did not even bother celebrating, for fear that VAR would chalk the goal off and he would look foolish.

And it killed the moment for those Villa fans in the away end that afternoon, too, who had to wait several minutes before the technology at the Premier League’s VAR headquarters on a trading estate just around the corner from Heathrow Airport confirmed it was a goal.

The defence of these VAR calls is that they are consistent, and consistency is something players and managers have been demanding for years. But not like this. Anyone still clinging to that is missing the point.

Parker is dead right, we are now in a battle for the soul of the game.

“It sucks the life out of you,” said co-commentator Alan Smith after Brighton’s Dan Burn was found to be offside by an armpit when he thought he had scored against Bournemouth last Saturday.

For the fans in the stadium, VAR has taken something significant away from the enjoyment and spontaneity of watching football. To witness how it is starting to affect the players is just as depressing. There can be no greater buzz in football than scoring a goal, but that pure moment of elation is no longer something players can fully appreciate for fear of VAR shaming.