I reckon it’s the older generation who are against it and in time no one will remember what it was like pre-var. A case of don’t mention the var, if you will.
I get the case for it, and I get that it adds an extra layer of “drama” for a certain modern “progressive” demographic. Sometimes it can even inject a bit of interest into a drab non-event, say Leeds Burnley: “I wonder if the var lads might cock something up here”.
But the line used to be that the rules, equipment and parameters were the universal; the same regardless of whether it’s Man Utd v Real Madrid or an amateur game in the Ivory Coast. That was a noble and beautiful thing imo.
The way I see it, the ref’s word should be final, not some invisible external god in the sky. If he gets it wrong sometimes then it’s just another element of luck, like that freak injury, that slip at a crucial moment or that lucky deflection that consigns your team to relegation or wins them the league.
At the end of the day it’s a game of two halves and while my head says var because it takes a lot of human error out of it, my heart says the game is unrecognisable now, altered in subtle ways and turned into something colder, more mechanical and less joyful to behold.
