Former coach: Football must regulate the use of VAR. The rules are too complex and have taken away the fun of football.

Former Wales coach Tony Pulis wrote a column and talked about his views on modern football, especially his criticism of VAR and refereeing rules.

Original column by Tony Pulis

After more than 50 years in football - as a player, coach and manager - I consider it the greatest team sport in the world - and I have witnessed many changes on and off the field.

There's a reason legendary former Liverpool manager Bill Shankly once declared football to be "the people's game" - and that's because it belongs to the fans. Today's supporters spend large amounts of their hard-earned money buying season tickets and jerseys for their children and travel across the country to support their teams.

That's why when I was asked to give my opinion on what I would change today to improve football, I didn't try to reinvent anything. Instead, I want to focus on things that are good for the fans. My biggest problem is that referees and VAR have become more important than the game itself. So, first of all, VAR must be limited. Video assistant referees are here to stay, but we have to change the way they are used.

Over the past few decades, television has changed the game in our country, markedly for the better. It pumped huge sums of money into facilities and enabled clubs to attract some of the most talented players in world football, but it was the intensive television coverage, with its forensic analysis and wall-to-wall expert debate, that led to the creation of VAR.

VAR was introduced to correct clear and obvious refereeing errors, such as Maradona's infamous "Hand of God" goal against England, or Thierry Henry's handball that resulted in France's decisive goal against the Republic of Ireland in the 2010 World Cup play-offs.

If it's used in the right way - for events like those where there's absolutely no debate - VAR can be a fantastic invention. But unfortunately, we are witnessing a worrying trend that I believe must be challenged and corrected.

In my day, referees were judged by whether you noticed them or not. It's impossible not to notice them now - wearing microphones, video recorders on their chests, even announcing to the crowd. On top of that, the game is constantly stopped while VAR checks every phase of the game, even the smallest incident. Everything was checked for infringements, meaning no goals could anymore be celebrated unanimously until cleared, with the horror of VAR checks hanging over the stadium like a dark cloud. The amount of time it took to somehow make these decisions is outrageous and I would say an insult to football in this country.

How many times have we witnessed the VAR process and come to an immediate conclusion after one viewing, only to have to wait an additional two or three minutes or more before VAR makes the same decision? The first thing I would change is that any VAR check cannot last longer than two minutes.

If the referees can't make a decision during that time, then in my opinion, they shouldn't be there. At this point, I would ensure that each VAR center also includes a former professional - a former manager, coach or player - as well as the replay operator, VAR and assistant VAR.

Professionals may not understand the rules of the game, but they will understand the game and how it is played. Howard Webber works on his own TV show with Michael Owen as director of the Professional Match Officials Council, and former referees such as Mike Dean and Dermot Gallagher also work on their own shows with former professional players. They all seem to be getting along well, so let's balance it out and have some former players and other professionals help make decisions during the game.

Timing is another thing I would like to change. I wish every game had a clock that could be stopped for injury, VAR and excessive time wasting - at the referee's discretion. Then, everyone in the stadium can calculate how much longer a game will last, rather than having to guess how many minutes will be added at the end. I used to laugh at this when I was coaching at all the clubs in the Premier League because if we beat a good team it was always more than five minutes - but if we lost to them it was always less than three minutes.

Referees are controlled and directed by the governing bodies, so they must be held accountable for many of the concerns above, but we must move away from the situation we are in, they have become all too common. We need to find a way to make referees invisible again because currently, our system has turned referees into distractions, which means you often hear more people talking about VAR and referee decisions than you do about goals scored or goals conceded.

Actually, I sometimes feel sorry for the referees because a lot of things have nothing to do with them. It is changes to the law in recent seasons that have made decision-making far more complex than it should be. For example, when Manchester City beat Liverpool on Sunday, the biggest talking point afterwards was Van Dijk's goal being disallowed.

According to the old-school way of judging offside, Robertson was definitely offside because he was beyond Manchester City's defense. There is no doubt about it. But the way the law is read now, when it comes to affecting play, vision or interfering with the goalkeeper, you can go deeper than the last defender and be ruled offside. Everything is so subjective to each incident, meaning the referee's interpretation takes center stage.

The same thing happened with the handball penalty. I don't think anyone really knows what handball is anymore - there are so many variations on every decision, which makes it almost impossible for the on-field referee or VAR to get it right. The over-complication has taken the fun out of football and I think it's ridiculous. Let's make things simple again so we can get back to our game and start talking about goals again, not referee decisions.