How Haaland exposed a recent flaw in live TV football

Something that’s been mildly irritating us for a while now turned into a fully-fledged gear-grinding p*ss-boiler at the weekend, so now unfortunately you all have to suffer as we attempt to achieve some sort of catharsis by writing it down.

Without wishing to go entirely too far down the Old Man Yells At Cloud route it is definitely something that didn’t used to happen anywhere near as often. And the thing is this: missing the restart after a goal because the TV director is still showing replays.

Our suspicion here is that this is yet another symptom of The Dreaded VAR, with the added kick in the testes of the fact that VAR itself actually makes it all the more imperative that we get to see kick-off after a goal has been scored.

VAR has given television more time after even the most uncontroversial goal is scored. More time to luxuriate in multiple replays and for Peter Drury’s soliloquys to grow ever longer and more convoluted. But that time is not infinite. And the very existence of VAR actually makes showing the kick-off after a goal more important than ever before; in all the excitement and confusion the sight of the conceding team restarting proceedings from the centre-circle can often be the first confirmation that the goal has definitely been given.

There really is no excuse to miss what is a fundamental if often mundane element of a live football match. There is almost no justification in our view for ever prioritising a(nother) replay over that symbolic moment of the game restarting.

And as Sunday’s wild concluding moments showed in such vital fashion, the fact that the few seconds after a restart are generally quite prosaic does not mean they all are. We’d go so far as to say that what could and arguably should have been a major talking point from the biggest game of the season so far has had its impact significantly reduced by the fact nobody really saw it properly until some time after the final whistle.

As Drury wanged on about some old sh*te or other and Gary Neville desperately tried to get a word of analysis in over the top of replay after replay, Erling Haaland’s head was falling clean off. Having pinged the ball off Gabriel’s head immediately after the goal, his response to the restart was to hurtle at pace directly into Thomas Partey.

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If we were more mischievously inclined, we might point out that Haaland pinging the ball off Gabriel’s head might be construed as delaying the restart, but that’s none of our business. The collision with Partey, though, sits squarely in events that are both very stupid and also that we would very much have liked to see.

Both those things were funny things for Haaland to have done, but neither were particularly sensible things for City’s mentality monster striker to have done, p*ssing away as they did all the considerable momentum that had been accrued by finally breaking through Arsenal’s stoic second-half rearguard.

The initial added time had been seven minutes; just before City scored their equaliser at 97:15 a message came through from VAR that they would be playing to 99 minutes to make up for time lost at the start of added time.

When play restarted after the goal, then, there should have been at least a good 90 seconds of additional action. It’s unlikely there would be a goal in that time, and sure, who’s ever heard of City overturning a 2-1 deficit at the Etihad with a pair of stoppage-time goals, but it was possible. Haaland’s overexcitement instead saw Michael Oliver decide to sod it all for a game of soldiers and call time after about three seconds of further action. Three seconds we didn’t even get to see.

If only there were a time soon after a 97th-minute goal to look at all the replays. A kind of ‘full-time’ if you will when there is no further live action from the match to enjoy. It would make sure we never again miss out on the sight of a large Norwegian running straight into an opponent for no immediately discernible reason, but it also doesn’t even really matter if that itself is rare.

The restart is a key part of the post-goal itinerary and we don’t want to miss even the most mundane ones where nobody runs straight into anybody. It’s just, like Haaland’s own late antics, entirely unnecessary.

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