The Road To VAR
As far back as 1966 and Geoff Hurst’s controversial goal, fans (and officials) have been asking “what really happened there?”. How far would England have got without Maradona’s Hand Of God? Here we present FourThreeThree’s six-part story “The Road to VAR” - how did we get here, where VAR would have been useful, and what happens next”
The 1966 World Cup Final between England and Germany is remembered for many things. Six goals, extra time and a who's who of footballing greats doing battle for football's ultimate prize. In England the 1966 World Cup triumph was nothing more than destiny fulfilled. Football had come home. But in Germany there's one more thing that the game is remembered for. It's the goal that never was or should never have been. When Geoff Hurst, back to goal, swiveled and rifled a thunderous shot onto the underside of the crossbar, the ball bounced down and back onto the field of play... and an age old controversy was born. England were adamant that the ball had crossed the line.
The Russian linesman agreed and the rest, as they say, is history. But the Germans were never convinced. Unsurprisingly one may say, given the historic rivalry between the two countries. But modern technology does seem to suggest that the Germans may well have been right, that the ball, the whole of the ball, had not crossed the line.
In the 2018 World Cup finals, for the very first time in the competition's history, FIFA introduced the video-assisted referee, VAR. In this series we will look at the most controversial refereeing decisions in the history of the game and how the emergence and development of television technology helped to usher in the age of the video-assisted referee. Episode 1. England vs. West Germany 1966 World Cup Final On the 30th of July 1966, history beckoned for two great footballing nations. Europe was still on the long hard road to recovery after another devastating World War and the 1960s brought fresh hope as well as social revolution.
Already World Cup winners in 1954, West Germany were determined to continue their post-war resurgence by adding another world title to their name. This time, in England, the home of football. After snubbing the World Cup in its first few iterations, the English FA finally woke up to the fact that football was being played in other parts of the world. The natural flair of the South Americans as well as tactical innovations across Europe meant that England were playing catch-up on the world stage.
Hosting the World Cup was an opportunity to make up for lost time. Alf Ramsey had a rich array of talent at his disposal, none more so than in attack, with Bobby Chalton, Roger Hunt and Jimmy Greaves proving an irresistible force. Jimmy Greaves was a goal-scoring phenomenon. Tearing through top flight defences for Chelsea, earned him a lucrative move abroad to the storied AC Milan, before returning to England with Tottenham Hotspur.
The start of the 1965-66 season was a difficult one for Greaves. Out of the Spurs team for three months with hepatitis, he returned in the second half of the season to goal-scoring form, hitting four against Norway in the final warm-up game before the World Cup. Greaves played all the group games of the World Cup before sustaining a serious injury on his shin, which needed 14 stitches. He was out of the World Cup, and a striker slot had now opened up. That place would go to one Geoff Hurst. Hurst would become the third in a famous trio of West Ham United players to play for England at the 1966 World Cup, joining Martin Peters and Captain Bobby Moore. And it would be Geoff Hurst that will be at the centre of a controversy that still rages today. Before we look at the controversy surrounding the final itself, it's interesting to note, if not largely ignored by much of the media, that the issue of refereeing standards and bias was a huge one amongst the teams from South America.
Brazilian great Pele was on the receiving end of some brutal treatment from opposition defenders. He was injured in the first game and never fully recovered in that tournament.
Attention turned to the English and German referees who officiated the matches. "The games had been a revelation to me in their unsportsman-like conduct and weak refereeing. England won the games that year, but in my opinion she did not have the best team”. Pele remarked. One of the most controversial games came in the quarterfinals between England and Argentina. It was ever thus. Argentina captain Antonio Ratin was sent off for dissent but refused to leave the field of play. Ratin argued he couldn't understand the German referee and accused Rudolph of refreying "with an England shirt on".
The Argentinian FA, whilst officially disapproving of the conduct of its players, laid the blame squarely at the feet of the referee for provoking their players and of bias toward the English hosts and those who selected him. Even Portuguese great Eusabio was moved to say, "The referee always seemed to see only the worst faults of the Argentina players. He could not see the faults of the England players." For South America, the root of the refereeing problem was, in the words of the V.A.R. in Stockley Park, clear and obvious.
The quarterfinals saw West Germany beat the South American side with two players sent off by an English referee. And England beat another South American side who had a player sent off by a German referee. South America packed its bags for home, seething with anger. England and West Germany prepared for the final. Wembley Stadium was full to the brim with 97,000 people in attendance, including her majesty the Queen and Prince Philip. An expectant crowd was silenced by an early German goal before hopes were raised with a Geoff Hearst equaliser shortly before half time. The second half was a gripping contest and it looked as though England had struck the decisive goal with Martin Peters scoring with just 13 minutes left to play.
The Germans refused to buckle and with seconds left before the final whistle Wolfgang Weber fired from close range to bring the game level at 2-2 and in to extra time. With four minutes remaining in the first period of extra time, Alan Ball raced down the right flank and whipped in a low cross. It found Geoff Hurst just outside the six yard box but with his back to goal. Hurst swiveled and fired in a goal bound shot only to see his effort cannon off the underside of the crossbar and back onto the field of play.
The Germans cleared the ball but the England players, led by Geoff Hurst and his strike partner that day Roger Hunt, were already celebrating. Swiss referee Gottfried Dienst was unsure and ran over to consult with Russian lineman Tofiq Bahramov. Incidentally, the Russian lineman as he has come to be commonly referred to was actually from Azerbaijan in what was then the Soviet Union. A former player turned referee, Bahramov was lauded in his Azeri homeland as a national hero. Indeed in 2006, the national stadium in Azerbaijan was renamed in Barahmov's honor. The only referee to have a stadium named after him. In attendance alongside then FIFA president, Sepp Blatter that day was Geoff Hurst.
Back to the game. The two officials, unable to communicate in any common tongue, resulted to sign language. Barahmov signaled that the ball had crossed the line. England players were jubilant, the Germans incensed. The referee pointed to the center circle, and England were on their way to work up glory. In Germany, speculation centered on linesman Barahmov. With West Germany knocking out the USSR in a previous round, there was suspicion amongst many in West Germany that Barahmov had been motivated by revenge.
But there was also anger toward the England players for their celebrations. Wolfgang Weber, seen heading the ball away as it comes off the crossbar, was adamant that the ball had not crossed the line.The footage also seems to contradict Hurst's claims that the fact that Roger Hunt did not simply tap the ball in was further proof that the goal was a valid one. In actual fact, Hunt would not have faced a tap in, but a stiff challenge from a player running in with greater momentum than the flatfooted Hunt. In a 2016 interview with German newspaper Der Tagerspiegel, Weber recalls his anger at English celebrations and remonstrating with Bobby Chalrton telling him to “Stop it!. What are you doing?"
Interestingly, the BBC coverage at the time described the Hurst goal as “dubious", which suggests that there was doubt about the veracity of the goal even amongst the English media. Indeed, Sir Geoff Hurst himself in his autobiography "1966 and All That" is quite forthcoming on his doubts about the legitimacy of his most famous goal.
He wrote, "Everyone understood the frustration felt by the Germans. They believed they'd been robbed of the most prestigious prize in World Football. Perhaps they were. They genuinely believed the ball had not crossed the line, and they may be right. Having listened to all the arguments over the decades and watched the replay hundreds of times on TV, I have to admit that it looks as though the ball didn't cross the line." That doubt, however, has turned to a more defensive posture. Hurst declared in a Daily Telegraph interview in 2013 that he wished that goal-line technology had been around in 1966. He says it would have prevented "50 years of German moaning”. But would it have? Well, according to a study by a team of researchers at Oxford University, the goal that was... should not have been. In fact, it didn't cross the line by some six centimeters.
Ian Reed and Andrew Zisserman of the Department of Engineering Science at Oxford University, undertook an exhaustive study in 1996. Using algorithms, mathematics, science, and all manner of Oxbridge-type magic and wizardry, the researchers came to the conclusion that the Germans were, after all, right, that the ball, the whole of the ball, had not crossed the line. A similar study undertaken by Duncan Gillies of the Visual Information Processing Group at Imperial College London came to the same conclusion. Case closed? Well not according to Sky Sports. In 2016, the British broadcaster teamed up with Games Developer EA Sports to recreate the disputed goal. According to EA, the Hurst goal was over the line by a good few inches. Que English celebrations and German protestations. German newspaper The Build responded to Jamie Carragher's assertion that the issue had been put to bed by pointing out that every other study had shown conclusively that the ball had not crossed the line.
They weren't going to take the word of a computer game company over every other study. Available footage from the match itself, however, leaves little room for doubt. Footage from the match cameras is inconclusive as the goalkeeper blocks a clear view of the ball coming down from the underside of the crossbar. However amateur footage taken from an excellent vantage point does seem to show clearly that the ball had landed on the line before spinning out onto the field of play. There's also footage from a match day photographer sitting close to the goal which also clearly shows the ball hitting the line. It was the first time that video footage was used to examine a footballing incident in such detail... albeit after the event.
Incidentally, in the years that followed his famous, or most infamous decision, Linesman Tofiq Barahmov explained his decision to award the goal by saying that the ball had not in fact hit the crossbar but had hit the net itself before bouncing back into play. As football coverage increased, television technology improved. Greater coverage invited greater scrutiny over every major referring decision. Managers, television pundits and supporters were now given license by the power of television to pass judgement over refereeing decisions and referees. Such scrutiny would not however be restricted to the performance and integrity of referees and match officials. It would also shine a light on footballers themselves and some of the more ugly truths of the beautiful game.