Are We Still Watching Football or Already Wrestling?

Scroll

Tonight: Bayern vs PSG, Champions League semifinal, 1-1. PSG escapes a second yellow, a clear penalty isn't even checked by VAR. I'm sitting in front of my computer and of course I can't judge objectively whether the ref got everything right — I'm a Bayern fan. But the bad taste lingers. And it fits into a story that's much bigger than a single game right now.

In Italy, the Serie A referee coordinator just suspended himself. Gianluca Rocchi, the man who decides which refs work which games, is suspected of pressuring referees and influencing VAR decisions. In favor of Inter Milan. Even his VAR supervisor Andrea Gervasoni is implicated.

My first reaction? Honestly, no surprise.

I'm an FC Bayern fan. And as such, you know the feeling: games against Real Madrid where the calls suspiciously go one way. Of course, fans of other Bundesliga clubs say the same about Bayern. The big club always benefits. But is it really just coincidence? Or does coincidence have a pattern?

The problem isn't Italy. Italy is just more honest — they get caught more often. Calciopoli 2006, now Rocchi 2026, twenty years later. But whoever thinks Germany, England or Spain are cleaner also thinks VAR is objective.

Speaking of VAR. It was introduced to solve exactly these problems. But what good is video review when the people operating the screen are part of the system? The decisions that come out after minutes of studying slow-motion replays are often just as incomprehensible as before. Only now with the appearance of objectivity.

And then there's sports betting. A three-digit billion market, somewhere between 100 and 200 billion dollars per year depending on estimates. Whoever believes that with these sums nobody gets the idea to influence a few results has never learned anything about human nature. Where there's money, there's corruption. That's not a conspiracy theory, that's statistics.

What really gets to me: I'm torn. Part of me says the big clubs are simply better. More money, better players, more pressure on opponents — and refs are only human who unconsciously give in to pressure. The other part sees patterns that are hard to ignore. And that part leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

With WWE wrestling, everyone knows it's all staged. The fights, the rivalries, the dramatic twists — all scripted. And people still watch. They even enjoy it, precisely because they know it's a show.

With football? We don't want to know. We invest emotions, buy jerseys, scream our lungs out — and block out that the system from sports betting through the associations to the refs could be riddled with interests that have nothing to do with sport.

Maybe the solution really is technology. AI that checks every decision in real time, that has no career fears, that doesn't get invited to dinner by association presidents. No human refs on the field — or at least an AI looking over their shoulder where you can't just close the screen.

And the players themselves? Karim Benzema was convicted in 2021 of blackmailing his national team colleague Mathieu Valbuena with a sex tape. One year suspended sentence, 75,000 euro fine. His consequence? He was called back to the national team, played the Euros and World Cup, and won the Ballon d'Or. The message is clear: As long as you kick well enough, everything is forgivable.

Until then we keep watching. With that queasy feeling in our stomachs. And with the silent question whether we haven't long been watching wrestling — just without admitting it.

Shakespeare said it over 400 years ago: All the world's a stage. He just forgot to mention that admission costs 200 billion dollars.

Sources