VAR – the main assistant to Arsenal: 18 passes against 6 passes for Trossard.
The number sounds like a humorous football meme, but it actually represents the actual number of times the video assistant was used to influence the decisions of the referees during matches played by Arsenal. In this season, VAR decisions directly affected 18 scoring opportunities for Arsenal’s players. This makes VAR the top-ranked technology in terms of assists for Mikel Arteta’s team. The nearest living player, Leandro Costa, made six passes.
Of course, these aren’t traditional passes. They refer to situations where penalties were awarded, opponents’ offside decisions were overturned, or controversial goals were awarded. Each of these situations changed the outcome of the game. The overall effect of VAR’s actions was comparable to that of the key players on the attack. This shows how important VAR has become in modern football, shifting the focus from purely tactical decisions to technical precision.
Experts point out that such statistical anomalies only exacerbate the debate over the balance between fairness and dynamics in play. While some praise the system for minimizing human errors, others criticize it for causing delays and subjective interpretations of rules. For Arsenal, this season has shown that modern technology can have a significant impact on the team’s performance, just as transfer policy does.
Football is evolving, and VAR has long ceased to be just an “additional referee”. It’s now a full-fledged participant in the game, whose assists are taken just as seriously as passes made on the field. The key question now isn’t whether the system intervenes, but how quickly the game adapts to this new reality, where technology and tactics work together seamlessly.