Atletico Madrid president Enrique Cerezo has strongly criticized VAR, calling it a “useless technology” following the controversy surrounding Julian Alvarez’s penalty in his team’s match against Real Madrid.
VAR has come under intense scrutiny since the Alvarez penalty controversy, with Atletico Madrid also filing a complaint with UEFA over the incident. Cerezo has now publicly criticized the use of VAR.
“Until Wednesday night, we were ready to compete in three competitions: the Champions League, the Copa del Rey, and La Liga,” Cerezo told Telemundo Deportes.
“But on that day, an incident with a device, a system, a tool that is terrifying, very bad, and has no use other than harming the teams. It’s called VAR, because they cut short one of our greatest hopes, which was to continue in the Champions League.”
He continued, “I’ve always disliked VAR. I’m not criticizing it because of the last mistake. It’s not the referee’s fault, but the technology itself.”
He concluded, “VAR is a controversial and unsafe tool, and above all, we all believe it was introduced to make football fairer, but I believe it has made football more unfair.”
