Bengaluru, March 3: Fans always get incensed at a wrong decision by referees during a football game. Video Assistant Referee was supposed to be a system that brought justice to the game. FIFA said it was a game changer and events like Theirry Henry's handball that kept Ireland out of the 2010 World Cup or Maradona's hand of God would never happen.

However, the use of VAR has opened up a can of worms that no one saw coming. When Tottenham took on Rochdale in the FA cup replay, several problems with the technology surfaced.

The most obvious problem is that it ruins the flow of the game. Football is a game that is constantly played back and forth and sudden stoppage of play to clarify if a refereeing decision was right not only ruins the flow, it potentially changes the way a game progresses. It even allows managers to unfairly slip in some tactical instructions in between the game.

It takes a lot of time to arrive at a decision through VAR and in this moment, the players and the crowd are completely lost. This is a new territory for fans where they are sitting idle wondering what is going on. This severely ruins match day experience for fans at the stadium and viewers alike. Some have suggested playing replays on giant screens at the venue to remedy this problem. However, this could cause a lot of damage as a referee will be open to abuse from fans.

When Liverpool were knocked out of the FA cup by West Brom, Jurgen Klopp claimed that the added time allotted was very less as VAR took up a lot of game time and even suggested that TV didn't want more than four minutes of extra time. Though BT Sport claimed it had no control over stoppage time, the situation seemed to raise an important question. If a match has multiple VAR decisions which ultimately eat into a TV time slot, will officials curtail stoppage time and half time break to compensate for the same. TV producers will definitely be unhappy if a match goes beyond its expected time slot.

VAR has only been in an experimental phase and it has caused several issues already. The positives of having right decisions taken during a football match have been outweighed by negative fan experience. Premier league owners will have to take a decision by voting on VAR for the next season and Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish has already said no. It will be interesting to see what FIFA does to improve the system.