Real Madrid 2-2 Club Brugge: 4 talking points | UEFA Champions League 2019/2020

Real Madrid v Club Brugge KV: Group A - UEFA Champions League
Real Madrid v Club Brugge KV: Group A - UEFA Champions League

#2 VAR proves its usefulness

Ramos' goal was wrongly ruled out for offside
Ramos' goal was wrongly ruled out for offside

The game of football has seen numerous innovations added over the years, with the most novel being the introduction of the Video Assistant Referee (VAR).

Having been test-run across various leagues and competitions over the last few years, the technology has now grown into mainstream acceptance and was belatedly used in the Champions League knockout rounds for the first time last season.

A day after it generated positive praise for overturning a blatantly wrong offside call against Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in the Premier League clash between Manchester United and Arsenal, VAR was once again in the news for all the right reasons.

In the Champions League fixture between Real Madrid and Club Brugge, it helped overturn not one but two wrong offside calls, with the overview of Sergio Ramos' goal being of note after TV angles had wrongly shown him to be offside.

While VAR might still be controversial to a large degree, it is a welcome development in football and as the fixture at the Bernabeu showed, humans would always be prone to shocking errors no matter how much training they get and the technology is here to help lessen the impact of their misjudgment.

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