The Explanation of Referee and Video Assisted Referee ‘Var’ System Through the Weberrian Perspective of Rationality and Post-Modern Theories

Football both in Turkey and in world is at the state of a loved sports branch. The style of football game, both attracts individual and society. Like every game, the need for someone who knows the rules and guarantees the obedience, creates the referee as authority. The resource of authority in football is referee. Referee rules the game and has the power to change the game. When we think of classification of rationality and authority the first name who did this is Max Weber. The decisions of referee and its resemblances with Weber’s rationality types, the affect of VAR system to the rationality of referee are discussed in this paper. Referee takes his/her source of authority from book of rules and laws. From this point of view, referee can be classified under legal-rational authority. In this study in addition to Weber’s authority types, his rationality system is considered, the difference between the types of rationality of both referee and spectators are analyzed. In this analysis the referees formal rationality and spectators substantive rationality are found to be contradicting, and this contradiction reveals itself more by the improvement of technology. From this perspective the shift to VAR becomes inevitable. In addition to this, post-modern theorists Foucault and Deleuze’s thoughts are considered and discussed in this paper. Based on Foucault's panopticon term referee is under watch all the times. This watching affects football in a positive way. For Deleuze shift from discipline society to control society accelerated. In this sense, VAR increases the control in football. Although the increase in control seems to have advantages from many ways, we must keep in mind that it can also lead to some unwanted conclusions.

Keywords

Football, Football Referee, Rationality, Max Weber, Video Assisted Referee (VAR).