When was the last innovation in football that you actually liked? That didn’t make the experience for the match-going supporter worse and was done implicitly to favour the generation of revenue or the richest clubs? VAR, 12 substitutes, hydration breaks with the four quarters, pricing out of supporters, VAR again; all dismal.
That is why Ref Cam is so good: it is almost unique, an innovation applied to football that has no obvious negative spin. It offers something new without the heavy stench of corporate bullshit. Even other camera angles (I’m talking about watching penalties from behind the taker) don’t feel right. This one does.
The original intention, as well as offering a literal fresh angle, was to help referees and VARs by demonstrating when an official had not been given clear sight of an incident. Pierluigi Collina, chairman of the Fifa Referees Committee, pushed for an expansion to the original Club World Cup trial because officials enjoyed its benefits.
Jude Bellingham’s England goal from the ref’s perspective (Screengrab: BBC)
More importantly for us, it offers a first-person perspective of elite football for the first time and thus brings us closer to players than we ever have before. This is how we all experienced football for the first time, with the ball at our feet.
