The "clear and obvious" standard is just one of those things that has to be clearly defined in practice, with concrete examples, to be workable. Unsurprisingly its a complete shit show because it is not defined in any meaningful way, so the interpretation just changes wildly from situation to situation and referee to referee.
I don't have a problem in the abstract with the Odegaard situation being called a foul. In a vacuum, I probably call it a foul too if I'm reffing that match and have a good look. Under the current shit show rules, if that goal was scored against Arsenal, I would certainly want it called back.
But was it "clear and obviously" an error not to call the foul? I'm not so sure about that. The thing about fouls is that contact is a necessary but insufficient criterion for fouling. You absolutely cannot simply refer to the fact of contact, or contact without touching the ball, as sufficient evidence for a foul because players contact each other all the time. A huge part of football is riding challenges, getting contacted while you have the ball and not falling over. Everything always comes down to the much more subjective question of whether the contact was truly disruptive enough to the other player to knock them down or impede them from some action they were taking. In this case, I think it was actually very borderline. Odegaard made the challenge, contacted Eriksen, and he went down very easily looking to buy the foul. If the play hadn't ended in a goal, Eriksen would have just got up, started running again, and nobody would have thought twice about the entire situation because its the type of thing that happens a million times a game and can get reasonably called either way.
In some ways, I think it might be better not to have VAR involved in this kind of thing at all. I would be perfectly fine with VAR being utilized for judging offsides on goals, penalty decisions, and red card decisions and nothing beyond that.
Is the bolded the actual standard? No snark intended. I've found myself pondering that a lot lately as I watch more and more games as a neutral.
To your point about the subjectivity of this exercise - couple of years ago at Old Trafford, Origi gets caught on similar contact from Rashford (coming through the player protecting the ball with his back turned) leading directly to a United goal, and VAR did not rule it a clear-and-obvious error. Similarly to you, I think that's the right interpretation, but the selective application of these standards makes it a crapshoot. Pick a standard, give examples of what the standard for a foul in these situations is / is not, add language around simulation and/or exaggeration of contact, and see how a clearly defined set of rules performs.
Shielding is almost its own category unto itself. But generally, I think defenders are called for going thru the back regardless of how soft the contact is. Probably one of the easiest things to simulate/dive, and hardest to regulate.
VAR is fine in any other league. This is purely a PMGOL issue and needs to be treated as such.
I’ve railed on this in many places, but if I were to make a few points, I’d stick to these:
1. VAR referees are dedicated and separate from the on-field staff. Make it absolutely clear that the goal of their profession is to correct on-field errors in applying the laws of the game.
3. Do the damn math, use the technology, and create dynamic offside error lines. You know the position of the ball, you know your framerate, get the players’ speed, and adjust thickness accordingly. The thin lines have made these decisions completely arbitrary. They aren’t even remotely related to the intent of the rule. Players are not gaining an advantage being millimeters offside.
4. Subjective decisions are limited to a short period of real-time or half speed review (at most).
5. VAR officials are particularly tasked with stamping simulation out of the game. If a player goes down without contact they have the authority to alert the center referee and award cards.
Don't you DARE ask about rule 2 lol
More substantively, I agree with 1.
Can you expand on number 3. What does a thicker line do? I'm not being glib/snarky here either. I still think there needs to be some more clarity about what the line means. For example, is the rule that the attacker in question in onside UNLESS he's past the thick line?
I've said this here before, but I've always thought using a footprint would make the rule easier. I don't particularly care if an attacker is leaning offside (yes, you can score a goal with your head or midsection, big whoop). However, if he has a full STEP ahead of the defender (i.e. attacker's front foot planted ahead of last defender's* back foot) , then it's clearly offside. If he has half a step (i.e. attacker's front foot is ahead of last defender's back foot* but it's in the air and not planted), I'd give that advantage to the attacker. It might start looking like hockey a bit with attackers lifting up a leg to ensure they don't STEP offside, but I'm all for Mbappe studying Hideo Nomo's windup to get his weight moving in the right direction as quickly as possible without planting his front foot. The Scandanavians, Eastern Euros, and Canadians, as common hockey-soccer dual athletes, would be at a slight advantage here. Plus, can you imagine awkward attackers trying to learn this skill? The skits write themselves here. Regardless, Timo Werner was JUST called offside based on any interpretation of the rule.
I love number 4. NFL is brutal with freeze- and frame-by-frame review. Just watch it in real time, or like you said once/twice with half speed, to help process visual data and make a call. Time limit is crucial here. 30 secs for fouls/yellows, 1 minute for goals/reds/second yellows.
I'm in agreement generally with 5, but there has to be a high standard for this too. I truly don't mind when a player feels contact and goes down, provided the player doesn't get up and whine after there's no call. Defenders always get pissy about this, but I think the sport would be better served with more no calls, to avoid punishing a defender for successfully getting position. In general, I think we want to encourage attackers to keep their feet and I think no calls when there's some contact but not enough to illegally impede the desired movement of the attacker (!and now we're back to the standard of most fouls I keyed on from
@Morgan's Magic Snowplow post above!) does that without disrupting the flow or having refs influence games too much.
*Don't try to get pedantic on me fellow Breakfast with Gazzans! We both know the rule, now shush.