VARmust improve in 2020-21

Sepp Blatter composed his most lugubrious expression, leaned forward meaningfully, gazed around the expectant quorum of reporters and admitted: “We are a laughing stock around the world.”

The phrase has been re-coined more recently about the erratic and belated arrival of VAR in the Premier League.

But Blatter was speaking as FIFA president a decade ago, the day after witnessing Frank Lampard’s infamous “phantom goal” against Germany at the 2010 World Cup.

There had been none of the “was-it-or-wasn’t-it?” guesswork which surrounds England’s third goal in the1966 final against the same opposition; nor even the “did-I-see-what-I-think-I-did?” over Diego Maradona’s “Hand of God” audacity for Argentina in Mexico in 1986.

Everyone in the