A half-decade into its VAR era, the English Premier League is committed to improving the replay system, even as a chorus of fans, players, pundits and coaches alike air their grievances on a seemingly weekly basis.

‘I think personally (VAR) was introduced in a manner that the world expected perfection,’ Premier League chief football officer Tony Scholes told American media on Tuesday. ‘They thought that by the introduction of VAR, there would never again be a referee mistake. That’s simply unrealistic.’

The latest round of discourse came about in late January after Arsenal’s Miles Lewis-Skelly was shown a straight red card for a foul on Wolverhampton’s Matt Doherty, a decision by referee Michael Oliver that many viewed as harsh. Days later, an independent panel rescinded the three-match suspension that initially accompanied the player’s red card.

Such a case is where the nature of soccer and refereeing’s human element collides with the luxury of frame-by-frame replays.

‘I think it’s a reasonable objective to achieve 100% accuracy on factual decisions (like offsides),’ Scholes said. ‘Once you move into subjective decisions though, the very nature of them is exactly the title: subjective.

‘We all have to accept that to a degree, which is why I think that people having visibility of the process, so at least they understand how a decision was made – perhaps a decision they disagree with – that they’re more accepting of a decision.’

Improving VAR is the goal

‘We adopt a high bar for interventions by VAR – a higher bar than they adopt in Europe and that’s deliberately so,’ Scholes said.

Seeking to clarify what warrants an intervention, the Premier League introduced the the concept of ‘referee’s call’ for the 2024-25 season, meaning that the on-field referee’s decision will stand unless the VAR official thinks there’s a ‘clear and obvious error.’

‘It was a foul. It was a bad foul,’ Scholes said of the Lewis-Skelly sending-off. ‘The question becomes was it a bad enough foul to be a red card?’

The Premier League’s chief football officer since 2022, Scholes said the league ‘wasn’t in the best place’ with VAR after a controversial call in last season’s Tottenham-Liverpool game – a goal incorrectly ruled offside that didn’t get an intervention after a breakdown in communications between the officials.

‘We got into a difficult place – to be honest – on VAR because of a high-profile error,’ Scholes said.

According to the Key Match Incident Panel, which analyzes calls in every match, 66 of the league’s 70 VAR interventions this season have been correct, with nine other occasions cited that VAR should have intervened but did not.

But they might never please everybody.

‘Of the four errors, I actually think one of them wasn’t an error at all. I think it was the correct decision,’ Scholes said. ‘That’s my personal view.’

Semi-automated offside is coming

While the Premier League hopes to implement a semi-automated offside system, errors in other leagues using similar technology have slowed its implementation in England.

‘Until such point that we are confident there will be a 0% error rate, we won’t be introducing it,’ Scholes said.

The league intended to bring the system online earlier, but ‘testing has proved more challenging than we thought it would be,’ Scholes said, adding that while he hopes semi-automated offside will be used ‘at some point this season,’ he expects it fully be in place by the team the 2025-26 season begins in August.

The technology made a high-profile mistake in Spain earlier this season, with a ‘glitch’ in the system incorrectly ruling that Barcelona’s Robert Lewandowski was offside for a goal against Real Sociedad.

‘It is because of situations like that that we have delayed,’ Scholes said.

Semi-automated offside was used for the first time in a major tournament at the 2022 World Cup and has since been adopted by leagues around the world.

UCLA coach Mick Cronin joked during a press conference last week that if he had Rick Pitino’s money, “I’d be on a private plane for Cabo right now.” 

Well, Rick Pitino has Rick Pitino’s money and he’s not on a plane to Cabo. On the contrary: He’s about to win the Big East in Year 2 at St. John’s. 

At 72 years old, Pitino’s contemporaries are pretty much gone from college basketball. Jim Boeheim talks on television. Mike Krzyzewski does a podcast. Roy Williams sits in the stands at North Carolina games like a fan. Leonard Hamilton announced Monday he’s calling it a career. 

And here’s Pitino, about to take a sixth school to the NCAA Tournament and maybe make his case as the best college basketball coach of all time. 

St. John’s, ranked No. 10 in this week’s USA TODAY Sports men’s basketball coaches poll, beat No. 11 Marquette 70-64 on Tuesday to establish a clear lead in the Big East regular season race. And it was classic Pitino, his team running and hustling and guarding like maniacs, winning with grit and pace and 21 offensive rebounds even when 3-pointers (3-for-16) and free throws (17-for-31) weren’t falling. 

Watching the game on television, it struck me that I don’t remember any part of my life as a sports fan that doesn’t include Pitino coaching big games and being a relevant figure in March. I had just turned 12 years old when Pitino’s Kentucky Wildcats lost to Christian Laettner and Duke on arguably the most famous buzzer-beater in NCAA Tournament history. 

Next month, I’m going to celebrate my 45th birthday, and Pitino will bring yet another team to March Madness with a legitimate chance to make the Final Four. 

Sometimes you have to take a step back and appreciate the sheer improbability of such a long, productive run. As much as college sports have evolved, as big as the generation gap has grown, one thing hasn’t changed at all. No matter what, Pitino is going to win — and win big — even as his contemporaries have mostly decided that they’re incapable of navigating the modern era. 

For a guy who’s won national championships at Kentucky and Louisville, getting St. John’s to 20-3 with a Big East championship in sight may be as impressive as anything he’s done. 

And if you’re an administrator at any major conference school that had an open coaching job over the last five or six years and passed on the chance to hire Pitino, you have to ask yourself: What were you doing? 

Yes, Pitino was fired in the fall of 2017 when the sport of college basketball was consumed by fears of an FBI investigation into illegal recruiting that ensnared Louisville recruit Brian Bowen among others. And coming on the heels of another scandal at Louisville, where a female escort claimed she was paid by a staff member to have sex with recruits, it’s obvious why Pitino had to be fired and held accountable — even if it was never proven that he had involvement in, or knowledge of, those misdeeds.

But right after the Final Four in 2019, I wrote that UCLA should hire Pitino, who at the time had gone to Greece to coach a pro team in Athens. Yes, there were issues and never-ending controversies. But he had paid his penance, and it was obvious he still had more to give. 

The only school willing to give Pitino a chance was Iona, and he rewarded that faith with two NCAA Tournament bids in three seasons. 

Even then, it’s not like he was a hot commodity. College administrators largely viewed him as too old, too toxic, too much of a novelty at a time when the sport was looking toward a name, image and likeness future and the coaches in Pitino’s generation were headed toward retirement. 

Whoops. Hate to say it, but I told ya so. 

Credit St. John’s for being ready to capitalize on the moment. 

For all the 1980s romance around the Johnnies and the allure of playing in Madison Square Garden, it has been a pretty terrible program with a clueless administration for a very long time. Over the last 20 years and five coaches, it has made the NCAA Tournament just three times, never advancing beyond the round of 64. The last time St. John’s won a tournament game? It was 2000 — before anyone on its roster was born.

Now the Johnnies are 20-3, having just won their ninth game in a row. Only a couple teams in college basketball are on a more impressive streak. Not only is St. John’s a postseason lock now, but it’s playing for the kind of seed that could position it for a very, very deep run in March — even with a roster that may not have a future NBA player. 

New York City is invested. The Garden is rocking every night. Something special suddenly seems possible. 

And only Pitino could have made that happen. 

You can relitigate all the controversies and personal embarrassments in his long life and career if you want, but none of those things are relevant to the bottom line here. Nearly every great college coach we’ve seen from Nick Saban to John Calipari has either lost a step or walked away as they’ve reckoned with changes in the sport and their own level of hunger to keep going. 

Pitino, by contrast, is still pulling off miracles, still turning around programs, still showing that he’s got a unique ability to pull the absolute best out of players who are tough and well-conditioned enough to play in his system. 

And if somehow he can get a fourth school to the Final Four — which suddenly looks like a realistic possibility — he will have an excellent case as the best coach in the history of college basketball. 

NEW ORLEANS – We’ve all been there, navigating a shopping mall with an express objective in mind and not wanting to be re-routed on a side quest. Or even leisurely strolling through one – while armed with ironclad knowledge that there are certain places one just has no intention or interest in setting foot into no matter how insistent the salesperson at a given establishment’s threshold is.

(Yet there I was Monday, trying to score a belt on the banks of the Mississippi River at New Orleans’ Riverwalk Outlets … before finding myself ushered into a Lavelier store by a very kind woman, simply doing her job, but completely adamant that her skin care products could do wonders around my eyes – while dually sure myself that my eyes are pretty much just fine and/or that nothing is going to reverse the aging process we’re all subject to.)

It was a benign enough encounter, one I had to extricate myself from by claiming I was late to meet a colleague for lunch as she tried to sit me in a makeup chair, yet one I would have already flushed from the memory banks.

Until I was reminded Tuesday that NFL players – even outsized ones from faraway lands who are about to play in the Super Bowl – well, they’re just like us.

So there I was, parked at the podium of the Philadelphia Eagles’ Jordan Mailata as he answered questions about the upcoming game … and whatever else. If you don’t know anything about him, he’s gargantuan – even by NFL standards – listed at 6-8, 365 pounds. He’s also arguably become the league’s best left tackle – which is all the more notable as Mailata, 27, is a native Australian who’s only been playing football for seven years after making the transition from professional rugby and going through the NFL’s International Player Pathway Program.

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Remarkable an accomplishment as that is, what’s perhaps even more compelling about Mailata, who’s also emerged (seriously) as a talented musician and singer, is his personality – which includes a willingness to patiently answer questions with intentional responses, which are frequently interspersed with his sharp sense of humor and some left-hand turns. He can even be a bit of a storyteller.

Take that time in New Orleans, where he was also blitzed at the Riverwalk Outlets.

“I’ve done a couple walkabouts,” said Mailata, using a signature Aussie term, when asked what he’d had a chance to do in the Big Easy when taking a break from preparing for the Kansas City Chiefs.

“Got trapped in the Lavelier store. … I was trapped there for about half an hour. They were trying to sell me on a couple products, and I didn’t have it in me to just get up and walk out.”

The thought of Mailata patiently listening to those sales pitches – for 30 minutes – while being shoehorned into one of those chairs. It’s simultaneously humorous and admirable. However he also ultimately used his stomach as a means to escape.

“Just kinda told the lady, ‘I’m late for dinner, about five (more) minutes, that’s all you’ve got,” Mailata said.

“She was kind enough to let me leave.”

Just don’t expect Mailata to pay that forward to Chris Jones and Co. on Sunday night.

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Quarterback Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs are trying to do what no team has done in NFL history: win three consecutive Super Bowls.

Kansas City will take on Philadelphia in Super Bowl 59 in New Orleans to decide the champion of the 2024 NFL season. These teams met two years ago in Super Bowl 57 with the Chiefs winning 38-35 and Mahomes taking home MVP honors.

As the Chiefs take aim at history, they’ll have the Mahomes’ newest family member there to cheer them on.

Mahomes confirmed he and his wife Brittany’s newborn daughter Golden Raye will be in attendance at Super Bowl 59.

“I’m excited for her to be able to come,” Mahomes said on Tuesday. “I think it’ll be her first football game at the Super Bowl and I hope that we get her a win.”

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“It’s always motivating whenever you have another baby,” Mahomes said. “I mean, just because I want them to have the same experiences that the other two have.”

Dallas Mavericks star Kyrie Irving shared his thoughts Tuesday night about the trade that shipped running mate Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers.

Irving, speaking after the Mavericks’ 118-116 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers, said he was ‘really shocked’ when he learned of the deal.

‘It’s still a grieving process right now,’ Irving told reporters. ‘Miss my hermano. We had a lot of time together. (Markieff Morris) too, and (Maxi Kleber). We just built some bonds that went beyond the basketball court.’

‘This is a business. It’s way above my paygrade,’ Irving added. ‘I just gotta adjust and be ready to welcome in my new teammates with open arms and kind of be ready to go back to Dallas, too, to speak in front of our fans. I know they’re feeling it, too. I’m feeling it too, guys.

‘It’s just an adjustment period. I don’t want to downplay this either, or disrespect our new guys; they’re going to help us win. They’re going to help us build toward a championship. But just like everyone else at home who kind of sees it from afar … it hurts.’

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Irving said the NBA is a ‘ruthless business.’ He added the Mavericks just have to be ‘ready to pick up the pieces and still run towards a championship. That’s the ultimate goal and why I play. Having other guys that are championship winners too helps, but at the same time we still have to acknowledge that our little Slovenian president is no longer here and we have to adjust.’

The 2016 NBA champ did say he was ‘excited’ to play with Anthony Davis. The duo had ‘envisioned’ playing together years ago, Irving said.

Doncic was officially introduced as the Lakers’ newest star Tuesday. Davis did not play Tuesday as he deals with an injury but did participate in shootaround with the Mavericks earlier in the day.

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This story was updated with new information

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. –  The Los Angeles Lakers are set up for the foreseeable future after general manager Rob Pelinka decided to acquire guard Luka Doncic over the weekend.

The Lakers traded away forward Anthony Davis, as part of a three-team deal, to the Dallas Mavericks in a move that helped Los Angeles keep a strong level of star power on the roster and get younger with the franchise’s top-end talent.

Like the Lakers, Doncic is already looking toward the future and the new opportunity.

The Slovenian was introduced to the media during an introductory press conference on Tuesday at the Lakers’ practice facility.

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“I thought I was going to spend my whole career (in Dallas) because loyalty is a big word for me and I was trying to stand by that, but this is a fresh start,” Doncic said. “I get to play in LA, the fans are amazing and I got the ocean here but I’m excited to be here.”

Doncic found out he was being traded like most of the basketball world late Saturday night.“I was about to go to sleep when the trade happened,” Doncic said. “I had to check my phone to make sure it wasn’t April 1st.”The guard said he spoke with forward LeBron James, shortly after the trade news became public, to welcome him.Doncic indicated that the conversation was fairly short as James wanted to respect the emotions Doncic may have been feeling that night.

Doncic will turn 26 years old in late February but has managed to make his mark in the NBA as a five-time all-league player.

As the featured player in Dallas, Doncic helped lead the franchise back to the NBA Finals last season for the first time since 2011.

He led several statistical categories during the postseason run with 635 points, 208 rebounds, 178 assists and 41 steals despite losing to the Boston Celtics in a five-game series.

This season, Doncic has been a triple-double threat every game and averaged 28.1 points, 8.3 rebounds and 7.8 assists and shot 46.4% from the field and 35.4% on 3-pointers in 22 games played for Dallas before he was sidelined with a calf injury on Christmas.

Despite that success, the Mavericks were willing to move on from the star player.

“That’s their decision, so I have no comment on that,” Doncic said. “They made a decision. I don’t know why but that’s their decision, so I can’t do anything about it.”

Power forward Maxi Kleber and forward/center Markieff Morris were also sent to Los Angeles by Dallas.

Doncic can find a sense of comfort in being surrounded by other familiar faces in reuniting with former teammates Dorian Finney-Smith and current coach JJ Redick.

Morris spoke highly of Doncic’s work ethic when asked about the reported concerns the Mavericks may have had regarding the star player’s level of conditioning and weight.

‘I hear stuff about him not being in shape, but if you can go into an NBA game and get 30/15/10 like it’s nothing then I don’t really know what ‘shape’ is,” Morris said.

Kleber has spent several seasons playing with Doncic and knows what he can expect from his teammate.

“I know Luka is a very competitive guy and he wants to win no matter what. …” Kleber said. “I know Luka is a very kind person and he took (the trade) to heart. … I don’t know if a guy like him needs extra motivation. I’ve seen him work out.”

When will Luka Doncic play for the Lakers?

Pelinka said Doncic is listed as day-to-day and the Lakers will work with the medical team to work toward having the guard play in a game soon. 

Doncic is expected to participate in 5-on-5 drills on Wednesday with the Lakers.

What is Luka Doncic’s contract situation?

Doncic signed a five-year $215.16 million fully guaranteed designated rookie extension with Dallas in 2022 and remains under contract throughout 2026-27, according to Spotrac.

He was eligible for a five-year, $345 million super-max contract extension this summer with the Mavericks but lost out on that opportunity once he was traded.

As Doncic was being asked during the press conference if he had made any indication to the Mavericks that he wasn’t going to sign the supermax deal, which pays a player a max of 35% of the salary cap, to remain in Dallas he immediately started shaking his head before simply answering “absolutely not.”

As Patrick Mahomes pursues Tom Brady’s status as the greatest of all time in the NFL, another G.O.A.T. could possibly attend Sunday’s big game in New Orleans. 

Lionel Messi wants to attend the Super Bowl, but not yet sure if he’ll be able to make it, a source close to Inter Miami star and Argentine World Cup champion told USA TODAY Sports on Tuesday night. 

It would be a tight turnaround for Messi, who is expected to play in an Inter Miami preseason game in Honduras at 8 p.m. ET on Saturday night. The club routinely flies home immediately after road games. The travel time from Honduras to South Florida is roughly more than two hours, about the same distance from South Florida to New Orleans. 

Mahomes, the Kansas City Chiefs’ star quarterback, was asked by a reporter about Messi potentially attending the Super Bowl rematch against the Philadelphia Eagles. His answer was posted by MundoNFL, a Spanish-language social media account affiliated with the NFL. 

“[Messi is] the GOAT of his profession. To have someone like that at the game would be awesome. I get to showcase who I am and what talent that I have,” Mahomes said. 

“So I got to watch him when he played in Kansas City, I think it was last year… And he had two goals in that game. And you see the greatness, the greatness that he displays every single day. And so [he’s] someone else that I can look up to and try to get to his level someday.” 

MLS TRANSFER TRACKER: Atlanta United smashes league transfer record

Messi and Mahomes briefly met last year, before he scored a goal with an assist (so yeah, two goals) as Inter Miami defeated Sporting Kansas City, 3-2, at the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium on April 13, 2024. A reported crowd of 72,610 attended, marking the most-attended soccer match in state of Missouri and the third-most attended MLS game in history. Messi and Inter Miami will play Sporting KC again in a Concacaf Champions Cup match on Feb. 18. 

Messi also had one of the most popular Super Bowl commercials last year with Michelob Ultra, featuring Miami Dolphins legend Dan Marino. 

Messi — the reigning MLS MVP and eight-time Ballon d’Or winner as the sport’s best player, is widely regarded as one of the best soccer players of all time. He’s certainly the most famous athlete living in the United States with more than 500 million followers on Instagram. 

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