Denmark’s delirium descended into depression with two hair-splitting applications of VAR

It took just two minutes, and two of the most hair-splitting applications of VAR you are likely to see, for Denmark’s delirium to turn into abject horror. Joachim Andersen was still lamenting the curse of technology for disallowing his goal by the width of Thomas Delaney’s toe when, desperate to thwart Germany’s instant counter-attack, his hand brushed a cross by David Raum at point-blank range.

Nobody here inside a seething BVB Stadion could see the contact with the naked eye. And when Stuart Attwell called on referee Michael Oliver to review the footage on the pitchside monitor, it was scarcely any more perceptible, requiring football’s answer to the snickometer – a motion-sensing microchip embedded in the ball – to determine that the Danish right-back had touched it at all.

No wonder that Denmark’s supporters in Dortmund hurled their lagers in fury. Or that Andersen pleaded with Oliver to replace painstaking frame-by-frame analysis with some modicum of common sense. For at this of all moments, could it truly be stated that VAR was delivering on its original promise to wipe out “clear and obvious” errors from the game? It seemed only to serve as a vampiric intrusion, sucking the joy from this match for transgressions that anyone without endless video replays was incapable of detecting.

One contentious VAR call, the Danes could just about abide, even if Andersen’s toenail offside needed a few degrees of magnification to establish. But a second straight afterwards, with the same player at the heart of it? A sense of intolerable injustice gripped the hordes in red, especially when the explanation flashed up on the screens. Andersen’s hand, the ruling read, had been used to make his body unnaturally bigger. Where exactly was his hand meant to be, though, if not tied behind his back?

Increasingly, this is becoming the only safe and sensible way to defend, with players exaggerating their “look, no hands” postures to escape sanction. But given the pressure of trying to stop Germany scoring, Andersen had his hand out in front of him and paid the heaviest price. While it looked as if it was in a natural position relative to his body movement, this counted for nought given Uefa’s insistence that the most slender margins are observed.

By the most pernickety interpretation of their rules, Oliver’s eventual decision to award the penalty was correct. There was a microchip, capturing every interaction between hand and ball at 500 frames per second, to prove the point. By the letter of the law, the judgment that Delaney had strayed millimetres offside could also be justified. But rarely have there been two more deflating examples of the punishment not fitting the crime.

Increasingly, the problem with VAR is that decisions are turning into grossly distorted representations of reality. It feels almost as if games are being governed by artificial intelligence, with a “rules are rules” philosophy slavishly followed without any regard for context. When the arguments for technology were first made, people could reconcile themselves to it on the grounds that it would offer consistency. But does a consistent model need to be so absolute that sensors are implanted in the ball to gauge the faintest feathering of a hand?

Trust Ange Postecoglou, the Tottenham manager, to inject some bracing Australian bluntness into the equation. “My question is that we can’t see ball contact at that disallowed goal for Andersen,” he said. “How do we know that’s right? That’s my problem all along – Michael Oliver isn’t making that decision. It’s not on Michael Oliver. Technology is supposed to be definitive.”

The degree of confusion and discontent is such that you wonder where all these VAR-induced agonies will end. Dietmar Hamann played 59 games for Germany, reaching the 2002 World Cup final. By rights, he should have been delighted that his country swept into a European Championship quarter-final on home turf, even if the turning point came courtesy of Kai Havertz’s dubiously-awarded penalty. He hardly sounded it in the aftermath, however, reflecting: “I never believed VAR was going to work. I took the good with the bad, but tonight is the first time I seriously worry about our beautiful game.”

Can it be coincidental that the only two games seriously disfigured by VAR controversies at this tournament have both involved Attwell? He also happened to be in the video bunker when Xavi Simons’ equaliser for the Netherlands against France was chalked off for offside after a check lasting several minutes. The link might be of some interest to Nottingham Forest fans, for whom he will always be defined by that infamous club tweet last season: “The VAR is a Luton fan.” But the criticism cuts no ice with Uefa, whose chief refereeing officer has singled out Attwell for praise.

“When Stuart Attwell is speaking,” Roberto Rossetti, “it’s like from the textbook of modern VAR communication.” It is a textbook that many, fearing more microscopic misfortunes such as the two that befell Denmark, would like to tear into tiny shreds. One is Denmark head coach Kasper Hjulmand, who will take some time to come to terms with the double indignity delivered here by supposedly ingenious technology.

“The offside was one centimetre,” he said, ruefully. “And I am so tired of the ridiculous handball rules. Andersen was running normally, and he was hit with the ball a metre away. Good luck to Germany, but in my opinion, this is not how football should be.” He spoke not just for the Danish diehards beating a weary retreat into the Dortmund rain, but for millions belatedly despairing of the chaos that VAR has unleashed.