When the Paint of Expectations Cracks: Why Chinese Football Needs to Look Inward Instead of Blaming VAR

In the stands of the Workers Stadium in Beijing, thirty years ago, I witnessed a match that silenced an entire league. Not because of a beautiful goal, but because a refereeing error had decided the fate of an entire season. Back then, we had no VAR, no social media to scream into the void — only the suffocating silence of thousands of spectators trying to understand why a referee had shown a red card to a player simply for running toward the ball too fast. Thirty years have passed, technology has changed, but our reactions to refereeing mistakes haven't changed at all. This week, in a Chinese Super League match, VAR intervened in the 87th minute to disallow a goal that millions of viewers on screens were certain was valid. The reaction on Chinese social media was as fierce as always: the hashtag #VARInvasion trended for three hours, sports commentators rushed to denounce the technology as if it were football's enemy, and fans once again blamed the system rather than asking whether something deeper was at play. I've been writing about football for five decades, and what I've learned is this: every time a new technology is introduced to football, our first reaction is always fear and denial. In 2026, when the back-pass rule was reintroduced to the Premier League, the experts of the time called it "the invasion of aesthetics" into a sport that was supposed to be rough. Thirty years later, no one remembers that controversy because the rule became a natural part of the game. VAR will follow the same path, but the problem is: we're using the VAR controversy to hide a far more serious disease afflicting Chinese football. Let me tell you about a match I observed in Shanghai in 2026. The home team lost 1-2, and the decisive goal came from an offside situation that VAR confirmed as legitimate. The stands reacted exactly as we've seen this week: outrage, abuse, blame. But what few noticed was that in that match, the home team had four clear scoring opportunities before that goal and not once could they put the ball into the opponent's net convincingly. If they had scored three out of four of those chances, the VAR controversy would have been meaningless. That's what I call the "paint of expectations" — we paint a picture of a strong team, of a team that deserves to win, and when reality doesn't match the painting, we blame anything except the team itself. In fifty years of following football from Vietnam to China, from Belgrade to Barcelona, I've never seen a football association develop by constantly blaming technology. Japan didn't rise by complaining about home-field lighting or referee quality. South Korea didn't reach the 2026 World Cup semifinals because they were lucky — even though many still believe that — but because they had a disciplined coaching system and a generation of players trained properly. Chinese football stands at a crossroads, and blaming VAR is just a way to postpone the real conversation that the Chinese Football Association needs to have. That conversation starts with a simple question: after more than three decades of investing billions of dollars in professional football, why hasn't China produced a generation of players who can compete fairly with Japan, South Korea, or even Vietnam? The answer isn't in VAR, isn't in the referees, and isn't in any conspiracy of outside forces. The answer lies in the system itself — from how we train young players, how we pay coaches, to how we define a club's success. I remember once, at a football symposium in Shanghai, a club director complained that he couldn't develop young players because of performance pressure. "If I field an 18-year-old and we lose three consecutive matches, I'll be fired," he said. That's the truth, and it exposes a fundamental paradox: we want to build a strong football nation, but our system doesn't allow anyone to fail and learn. When a young player makes a mistake, he's substituted. When a young coach loses a few matches, he's fired. When an entire league doesn't meet expectations, we blame VAR. This is what I've observed in Vietnamese football, where I was born: when the Vietnamese national team reached the quarterfinals of the 2026 Asian Cup, none of them complained about referees or technology. They simply played football, and when they lost, they accepted defeat with dignity. That's not the humility of the weak; that's the maturity of a football nation that has learned to look in the mirror. Vietnamese football isn't perfect — they still lack squad depth, still struggle with transitioning from defense to attack — but at least they're moving in the right direction because they dare to look at their real weaknesses instead of seeking a scapegoat. Returning to VAR: I'm not someone who idealizes this technology. It has real flaws — the waiting time kills the flow of matches, decisions that are "correct by the rules but wrong by emotion" still occur, and sometimes camera angles don't allow precise determination of a player's position. But those flaws can be improved with better technology, clearer procedures, and more thorough referee training. What cannot be improved is the culture of blame that's secretly destroying Chinese football from within. One of the most memorable matches in my career was a final between two teams that the entire world believed would be decided by technology. That was the 2026 World Cup final where Andres Iniesta scored the winning goal in the 116th minute and Spain won their first championship. No VAR, no noteworthy technology — just a player in the right place at the right time and scoring. If Iniesta had missed, if Xavi hadn't made that pass, if the goal frame had been slightly narrower — Spain would have lost, and no one would have spoken of any conspiracy. Football works that way: random moments create outcomes, and we need to learn to accept that. So what do I propose for Chinese football? First, let VAR be VAR — a support tool, not a deity. Second, channel energy into building real youth development systems, not expensive training centers that only produce players who can run but can't read a match. Third, and most importantly, teach the younger generation that failure isn't the end — it's a lesson. Because if we continue to nurture a generation of players who fear failure so much that they only know how to blame others when things go wrong, then with or without VAR, with or without any technology that emerges, Chinese football will forever stand at a crossroads and never find its way. An empty stadium doesn't strip away the crowd's roar; it just lets us hear more clearly the sighs of those trying to change. And those sighs, I hear more clearly than ever.