Stellies mentor Steve Barker maintains VAR a necessity

He was speaking after Stellies were eliminated from the CAF Confederation Cup semi-finals by Simba SC on the back of two penalty decisions being overturned and a Stellenbosch goal disallowed.

Simba won the tie 1-0 on aggregate having beaten Stellies in Zanzibar a week ago, but Barker did not have sour grapes.

“Look I’ve always advocated for VAR to be in our league, if decisions don’t go your way basically you know where to look and make the right decision, I think it’s the right way going forward,” said Barker.

“I do think, unfortunately, last week the VAR decision was left again in the referee's hands to make a decision when the player was impeded which I felt that he was, so I don’t think that should have been awarded a goal and today unfortunately I haven’t had the opportunity to look at all the VAR decisions so it will unwise for me to comment on it.

“I’ve been told that the goal that we scored was marginally offside, so I think VAR is there to make things as fair as possible. We can’t want something then when we get it be upset with it, so to answer your question once I’ve seen all of them, I’ll be able to make an informed decision but I do hope that we do get VAR. We were bit unlucky in the decisions that went against us in the last two games.”

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Barker believes they proved their determination in trying to claw their way back and knockout Simba at the Moses Mabhida Stadium.

“To be honest we’ve tried everything today from a tactical point of view, from the substitutions we made, from the pressure we applied, I thought we did everything that we planned,” the coach added.

“Obviously the plan was not to concede, trying obviously to get a goal which I don’t think it was lack of effort.

“We also had Bradley Mojela out for the whole season basically. Ashley Cupido not available for this part so I can’t fault the players, I want to congratulate the team for the journey that we’ve been on, it hasn’t been an easy journey, a lot of travelling and a lot of playing home games away from the Western Cape.

“For us to have competed at this level against teams like Zamalek, RSB Berkane to get ourselves this close to getting into a final I think it’s credit to the team and considering that it’s our first adventure in Africa.

“I thought we did everything that we could, we were a little bit unlucky with some half chances. We looked threatening on set pieces, one or two decisions at the end, maybe a better decision from one or two of the moments that we had when we got in behind could have maybe got us that goal.