​Derek Rae was a VAR believer. He might still be, but the Argentina-Egypt round of 16 match has him asking some hard questions about where the technology has ended up.The Fox broadcaster appeared on Sports Media with Richard Deitsch and explained his evolving relationship with the video assistant referee. Rae said he was an early proponent of VAR, having noticed at live matches that fans in the stands had their phones out, watching replays in real time and arriving at conclusions officials couldn’t reach without the same footage.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“I thought this is the right thing,” Rae said, pointing to the 2018 World Cup in Russia as a period when VAR was applied sensibly, when the technology served its intended purpose without distorting the game around it. “But I think we’ve moved on a bit and maybe moved on too much.”That much was on display during Argentina’s 3-2 comeback win over Egypt in the round of 16 on July 7. Egypt led 1-0 when Mostafa Zico finished a slick sequence involving Haissem Hassan and Mo Salah to make it 2-0 in the 58th minute — only to have the goal disallowed when VAR retroactively identified a foul committed by Egypt’s Marwan Attia on Lisandro Martinez on the opposite end of the pitch — a challenge that had no bearing on the sequence that led to the goal.Fox’s Rob Green, calling the match alongside Derek Rae, pushed back on the decision immediately, making the case that VAR had been stretched well beyond anything it was designed to adjudicate.“A hundred yards away, someone stepping on someone’s toe, is not why VAR was brought into the game,” Green said. “We’ve gotten to a point now where it’s reaching far beyond the powers that it should have.”“I thought Rob did a wonderful job on that one of making the point of sort of saying, well, what are we doing here with VAR?” Rae said, addressing his broadcast partner’s comments on Deitsch’s pod. “First of all, was that a foul? It might have been, it might not have been, but did it actually have anything to do with the goal?”AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementRae pointed to Thierry Henry’s brazen handball for France against the Republic of Ireland in the 2010 World Cup qualifying playoff as the incident that made the original case for VAR.“And we all said if we had technology, if we had video technology, then that would never have happened,” Rae said. “Maybe the Republic of Ireland would have made it and France wouldn’t.”The Argentina-Egypt decision — and many others — seem to be an overcorrection of that original problem. Rae stopped well short of demanding VAR’s abolition, given that original premise for it remains ironclad, he said, and there’s something fundamentally untenable about a system in which millions of fans watching at home can access a truth that the officials adjudicating the match cannot. But the technology has metastasized well beyond its original mandate, and Rae believe