VAR is a crime against football.

Let’s not pussyfoot around anymore: it must be stopped before it kills the game.

“VAR is doing a lot of damage,” said Spurs’ boss Antonio Conte after the latest outrage.

The shocking incident occurred at Tottenham early Thursday morning Malaysian time.

It took VAR officials more than four minutes to rule out Harry Kane’s last-kick ‘winner’ against Sporting Lisbon that should have ensured Spurs’ passage to the Champions League knock-out phase.

For four minutes, the ‘goal’ stood as one of the magnificent new stadium’s greatest moments.

At a stroke, it justified the club’s change in policy to spend big and hire an elite manager in Conte.

It also capped a fine, fighting comeback by the team.

It would allow the Italian to rest players in next week’s final ‘dead’ group match before the big EPL clash with Liverpool the following weekend.

It had a season-changing feel to it.

To Spurs fans, it was monumental and they celebrated accordingly.

But the euphoria turned to dread once it was known that two men in a cubicle somewhere had their geometry sets out.

So 60,000 held their breath.

NASA gets a quicker response from its golf buggies on Mars than you get from VAR.

And then the referee drew the ominous rectangle and unbridled joy turned to anger and despair.

The ‘goal’ was ruled out because a kneecap was offside.

Whether it was Kane’s kneecap or Emerson Royal’s is not clear at the time of writing.

You wonder how many fans will decide ‘enough is enough’ of this nonsense.

How many kids will decide football is not their thing when they demand an explanation that their bewildered dads cannot give.

You wonder how many dads will decide football is no longer their thing.

Every match day, whether domestic or European, we see these travesties inflicted upon the game.

We see rage and despair on a scale that seldom happened when pre-VAR refs got it wrong.

There was anger but not on this scale.

Brought in to eradicate the major howlers such as the ‘Hand of God’ and Thierry Henry’s infamous handball against Ireland, it was thought that technology would be the answer.

Well, it can help. A fifth official watching a monitor could correct such things in seconds.

Ask anyone – player or fan – and they’ll tell you it’s the delay that kills.

The beauty of goal-line technology is that it’s instant as well as being accurate.

There have been only a couple of errors in thousands of matches.

FIFA knew that such accuracy would be impossible with VAR, but still foisted it upon the game.

And even they didn’t intend it to be such a draconian killjoy.

The words “clear and obvious” show it was meant to have a light touch and be used sparingly.

But many incidents we see reviewed, like the one at Spurs, are borderline and should not be VAR’s business.

Whatever your view, it was not a “clear and obvious” mistake by the ref.

In fact, when a ruling takes that long, the error – if there is one – cannot have been “clear and obvious” by definition.

It’s a myth that perfection can be achieved by decisions that are subjective so why repeatedly rob fans of so much joy just to claim a tiny percentage improvement in correct decisions?

The ball bursting the net is football’s orgasmic moment, after all.

FIFA should not have called it VAR or made such a big deal out of it.

Offside and handball have proved too difficult even with umpteen replays and angles.

It must be said that the laws don’t help – in fact, the more they’ve been tweaked to help officials, the more outrage they have created.

Now, it seems only amputation would make a player truly secure against a handball offence inside the box.

Even when the ball is blasted at his arm – or shoulder sometimes – from point-blank range, penalties are given.

Why even bother when the rule book itself admits that many decisions are subjective?

As for diving for penalties, bring on the Thought Police.

It’s even been suggested that the VAR controversies have added another layer of drama!

Among people I know, having euphoria turned into despair is not something likely to catch on.

As it was at Tottenham, it seems right to reflect on the words of the late and legendary Spurs skipper, Danny Blanchflower who insisted:

“The game is about glory. It is about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.”

His words have echoed down the ages at White Hart Lane like Bill Shankly’s on football’s importance have at Liverpool.

Now Spurs need a draw in Marseille from a game that is now very much alive.

And their season and Conte’s future may hang on it.

As for Sporting Lisbon, what they felt that night  might have been relief, but it certainly wouldn’t have been glory.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.