Club boss Klaus Hofmann spoke out in favour of abolishing video evidence at the FC Augsburg general meeting.
Hofmann likes to use the stage at the general meeting of FC Augsburg to place his fundamental opinion on developments in the world of football in a way that attracts attention. The FCA CEO has sometimes crossed the line between a clear edge and populist polemics. In 2017, he lashed out at RB Leipzig (“RB should not have a licence”), and in 2019 he voiced fierce criticism of the video assistants’ approach in the Bundesliga (“Three changes or kick it in the bin”).
At the time, Hofmann, who had clearly spoken out in favour of the video review with FCA in the run-up to its introduction, still wanted to wait for the technical innovation to develop further. A good two years later, he has formed a final opinion and is calling for it to be abolished: “Video evidence must go. “
“This pseudo-accuracy we are deluding ourselves with is ruining the game. “
KLAUS HOFMANN
“What we have not considered is that this pseudo-science has no clear line,” Hofmann justifies his view. The basic idea, he says, is to avoid clear wrong decisions, but: “Where is the border between 100 and 99 per cent, between 99 and 98 per cent? That’s what’s wrong with video evidence,” Hofmann thinks. “This pseudo-accuracy that we delude ourselves with is ruining the game.”
“It makes football bad when you don’t know if you can be happy because you have to wait to see if a goal counts or not,” Hofmann elaborates. The fire safety entrepreneur also calls the calibrated lines used to determine offside positions “pseudo-scientific offside arithmetic. “
Hofmann does not want to venture an advance
In the 1-1 draw against Bielefeld on Sunday, FCA had two goals disallowed due to narrow offsides. These, however, had been directly indicated by the linesman and subsequently confirmed by the VAR. Hofmann believes that the still images used to make the decisions are not reliable: “How do you want to determine when the ball is played?” If you only fast-forward or rewind one frame, the decision could change. That is why, Hofmann concludes, video evidence makes “no sense” here either. For the time being, however, he does not want to make an approach to the DFL. Because he knows that FCA alone would have no chance.