The Law Is Not in Memory: Lessons from a 2026 Mistake and a 523-Match Project

The Mistake Started with One Sentence

In June 2026, during the opening match of Group C between France and Australia, in the 55th minute, the referee consulted VAR and awarded a penalty to France for a handball by Josh Risdon. I was sitting in a Valencia radio studio as a law expert invited to provide live analysis. I confidently stated that the ball had hit the upper arm and therefore was not a handball, based on the laws I had learned in 2026. A colleague immediately corrected me: since 2026, the law had counted the armpit area as part of the arm. Over 4 million listeners heard me get it wrong, and the editorial team had to issue an on-air correction. It was the first time in 30 years I had been directly contradicted on air.

The lesson was not that I had forgotten the law. The lesson was that I had been certain without checking. The law is not in memory; it is in data.

From One Wrong Sentence to 523 Matches

In August 2026, I started a personal project: recording every VAR decision in La Liga and the Champions League with error codes, timestamps, distances, and ball speeds. The goal was not to write better articles, but to understand precisely what happens inside controversial decisions. By the time COVID-19 halted football in March 2026, I had 523 matches in the database.

What the data showed was not what I expected. Across those 523 matches, 74% of offside error decisions were contested with an average delay of 47 seconds. This number is not just a statistic. It is evidence that the problem lies in the process, not in refereeing personnel. When a correct decision is contested slowly, it erodes public trust in the entire system, including the correct decisions.

I published a 48-page report on my personal blog, proposing a 30-second limit for each review. The Valencia Football Federation invited me to advise on process reform. One match is just a story. Five hundred matches is the law.

Referees Don't Need Protection, They Need to Be Understood with Correct Data

In my years as a law expert, I discovered something few people say directly: referees treat big clubs and small clubs differently, and it is not a conspiracy theory. It is real stadium and media pressure. When 80,000 fans at Camp Nou scream about a situation, when 200 journalists write about a wrong decision, that pressure does not disappear just because the referee is a professional. It affects timing, review decisions, and communication with VAR.

But this should not be used to excuse mistakes. On the contrary, it should be used to design better systems. Referees don't need protection. They need to be understood with correct data.

When I counted every phase of play across 523 matches, I understood that the law does not judge anyone. It only waits to be applied correctly. A shocking decision is not reckless if it is built on five hundred foundations. But a shocking decision without data behind it is just a guess.

A Different Angle: When Emotion Beats the Law

One thing I noticed after analyzing the data: fans do not protest VAR because they don't understand the law. They protest because they are not part of the process. In 523 matches, the most controversial decisions were not the clearly wrong ones. They were the correct ones made in high-emotion contexts.

That is why I started writing articles in the style of citing specific article numbers, always noting which revision year of the law is being referenced instead of using old knowledge. Every situational analysis has a footnote about when the law was enacted and amended. I commit to never saying "in my opinion" without having checked.

But that commitment is not enough. When a VAR decision takes 47 seconds, fans have 47 seconds to build a story in their heads. That story is never about the law. It is about fairness, about bias, about what they believe to be true. My data can prove a decision is technically correct. It cannot prove that the decision is felt to be correct.

Lessons from 2026

I once said one wrong sentence and lost an entire reputation. If only I had known this back then. I have learned that verification is not a step in the writing process. It is the writing process. Every time I am about to write something about the law, I check it. Every time I am about to cite a number, I specify the period, the league, and the data collection conditions.

I wrote an article defending referees with false statistics. That was the time I betrayed my own principles.

From that mistake, I created a document tracking law updates year by year. Every situational analysis has a footnote about when the law was enacted and amended. This way of writing is slower. But it is the only way for a 67-year-old to continue working in this profession without causing further harm.

Final Thoughts

At 67, I don't need to remember everything. I need to know how to find what is right. The 523-match project is not the end. It is a beginning. The Valencia Football Federation has invited me to advise on VAR process reform, and I am continuing to expand the database to other leagues.

The laws of football will continue to change. There will be more people like me in 2026, certain about something that is no longer true. The question is not how to never be wrong. The question is how to build a system where data verification is a mandatory part of every decision, not an add-on. When that becomes the standard, only then can we talk about fairness seriously.