Five years ago, Arsène Wenger – one of the game’s most revered minds – proposed what seemed like a bold fix for one of football’s most frustrating problems: VAR offside calls decided by toenails, shoulders, and nostrils.
His idea? As long as any part of the attacker that can legally score is in line with the last defender, it shouldn’t be offside. Sounds logical, right?
Wrong.
Because while Wenger’s “daylight” tweak tries to clean up the microscopic margins of VAR, it actually risks tipping the game into chaos.
Imagine a striker sprinting in with just the toe of his trailing foot in line with the defender’s heel. Under this rule, that’s onside. What happens then? High defensive lines vanish.
Compact midfields turn into 60-yard deserts. Set pieces become a nightmare to defend. You don’t fix millimetre offsides by making them centimetre chaos.
And anyway, the real issue isn’t offside. It’s handball.
VAR has utterly butchered the spirit of the handball law. Take Myles Lewis-Skelly’s “penalty” against PSG. The ball grazed his hand. No one saw it.
Not the ref. Not the fans. Not the players. But VAR spotted it, and suddenly PSG had an 80% chance at a goal. A game-changing penalty for something no one thought was an offence.
The handball rule is now so far from reality that we’ve accepted it as a glitch in the game. Balance arms, reflexes, body shape – they mean nothing.
It’s handball roulette. Even expert commentators like Sue Smith are begging for reason: “He’s turning away, his arm’s for balance – it’s harsh.” And she’s right. This isn’t football anymore. It’s courtroom drama with shoulder replays.
And before we tinker with offsides again – daylight, torso, whichever part of the body VAR can best track this week – can someone please fix the law that’s actually killing the joy of the game?
Until then, football is bleeding from a thousand VAR cuts.
And if you want to see what it looks like when a whole club says enough is enough, look no further than Arteta’s powerful stand after Arsenal’s own VAR controversy. It’s the kind of unity that might just force real change.
Football deserves better. Give us the beautiful game back.
