VAR gets it wrong on opening day: Is PSM Makassar robbed, or is Southeast Asian football finding another excuse to forget its own wounds?

Moments after the opening match of Super League 2026/2027 ended in Bandung, Greg Nwokolo typed a sentence of seven words on his phone: “Baru aja mulai liga VAR udah error.” This is no longer a personal complaint; it reads like a verdict on an entire system that has just been restarted after the off-season. PSM Makassar fans imagined they would celebrate an opening-day victory when Kodai Tanaka gave the visitors the lead at Gelora Bandung Lautan Api. In the blink of an eye, Persib Bandung scored three straight goals through Patricio Matricardi, Balsa Sekulic and Uilliam Barros to overturn the match 3-1. But the debate did not stop at the scoreline. It stopped at one touch, one whistle, one trip to the monitor and the penalty that the referee took away after he had first pointed to the spot. Luka Bulatovic fell inside the box after a duel with Gabriel Mutombo. PSM were losing 1-2 at the time. If the penalty had been kept and converted, the match would have been level. Instead, VAR intervened, the referee changed his mind. The roar of tens of thousands of home fans could overwhelm everything in Bandung, but in the minds of every PSM player, that sound landed like a slap. The point is not whether the referee was right or wrong. The point is that nobody is courageous enough to tell supporters why. Greg Nwokolo, the former Indonesia international who once played for Persija Jakarta, wrote only one short line on Instagram, reproduced by @suksesbola on September 8, 2026. That status was powerful enough to become an instant talking point. In Southeast Asian football, a complaint from an ex-player is often treated as the voice of the losing side. But this time it hit an old fracture: the lack of transparency inside the VAR room. PSM Makassar head coach Darije Kalezic stayed cautious. The Bosnian-Herzegovinian said he needed to review the footage before making any definitive judgment. He said in the press conference: “There were a few moments we had, and there were also moments that may have been penalties. Many people say it was a penalty, many people say it was not.” The answer is almost perfect in diplomatic terms, but completely meaningless to a PSM supporter who had flown from Makassar to Java simply to watch his team lose after leading. Let us step away from Bandung for a moment and look at the bigger picture. VAR was once promoted as a shield for fairness. How it is implemented in Southeast Asia shows that the shield has a hole called explanation. After checking the monitor, the referee makes a hand gesture; supporters inside the stadium look at the big screen or their phones. Nobody hears the conversation between the match officials and the VAR hub. Nobody knows which replay was slowed down, what advice was given, and everyone can only guess from a short video clip. The paradox is that modern football tries to remove human error while putting humans in a secret room. Modern VAR does not kill spontaneity on the pitch. It locks spontaneity in a tactical cage where the decision belongs to an angle the public cannot verify. That empty room is what Southeast Asian football is facing: the more images there are, the less truth becomes visible. As part of that ongoing story, I remember my own working days in European stadiums, where referees in several countries have begun releasing audio conversations with the VAR hub to the press after matches. Some decisions are right and some are wrong, but at least supporters know why the decision was made. In the PSM Makassar-Persib Bandung match, the debate was left open. The essence of a penalty lies in the point of contact, the amount of force and the context of the duel. A light touch on the boot can still be a penalty if the attacking player is in control of the ball. But if VAR concluded that Bulatovic went down unnaturally or that Mutombo touched the ball first, everything changes. The issue is not whether the conclusion is correct; it is that the conclusion reached the public in complete silence. Greg Nwokolo was not the first person to complain about VAR in the pre-season. Referee training camps are usually held behind closed doors, and VAR test images appear only in administrative notices. When the season officially began, the federation expected the system to run smoothly. But football is not a pre-programmed machine, and penalty-area situations are a gray zone. Without a proper explanation procedure, a single incident on the opening day can become the manifesto for an entire season. PSM Makassar are entitled to feel aggrieved. They scored first and produced sharp moments that put pressure on Persib’s defense. The story could have been completely different if they had been awarded a penalty at 1-2. But Darije Kalezic understands that football is not decided by one situation alone. PSM conceded three goals. Even if the penalty had been accepted and converted to make it 2-2, the defense would still have exposed gaps in later phases. Accusing VAR is both correct and dangerous because it can hide the team’s professional weaknesses. The night in Bandung was a strange symphony: home fans’ celebrations tore through the air, while the defeated eyes of the away side spoke of a fear of being abandoned. This fear does not exist in only one match. It lingers in every diplomatic press-conference answer from Kalezic, in every short status from Greg, and in the exhaustion of referees who know they will be insulted even when their decision is accurate. Applause in an empty stadium is the echo of fear, not the echo of joy. Gelora Bandung Lautan Api was not empty, but for those who never heard an explanation from the VAR room, the loneliness felt heavy. Southeast Asian football often comforts itself by saying VAR is progress compared with the past. That is true. But if it only means installing cameras and buying machines, VAR becomes a prop that decorates the image for media instead of a true tool of justice. Referees are placed in a position where they cannot explain, while supporters are placed in a position where they cannot speak. They can only write a short message online like Greg Nwokolo and wait for endless arguments. There is a thin line between demanding fairness and turning yourself into a loser who likes to complain. PSM Makassar cannot deny that they lost more than a football match that day. They lost in transition, lost by missing chances, and lost patience under the pressure of the home side. Even if the penalty had been given, the match could have followed another direction, and nobody can guarantee PSM would have held the draw. But people need an excuse not to look at their own team’s professional wounds. VAR is the perfect excuse: it is invisible, it is new, and it is beyond the control of any player on the pitch. A championship never comes from one penalty, but supporters often need a reason to hate the strong more than they need to accept the weakness of the weak. Let me turn the situation around for a moment. Seen from a purely sporting angle, video technology is not the enemy. Goalkeepers do not lose form because of VAR. Wingers do not lose speed because of VAR. PSM’s defense revealed too many spaces in dead-ball situations, and when Persib scored the equalizer, the away side failed to react decisively before being broken down within minutes. Blaming the refereeing team entirely is the easiest and most dangerous way out. In a long season, the team that turns itself into a victim will struggle to rise again in later rounds. However, that does not mean VAR is exempt from responsibility. The organizers of Super League 2026/2027 must quickly issue a process of explanation through video or audio recordings so that supporters understand why the penalty decision was withdrawn. Europe’s leading leagues have moved in this direction for years, and Japan has also tested similar options at domestic level. Southeast Asia cannot stand outside that wave. If referees continue to stay silent after every controversial decision, everything will revolve around subjective accusations. Without objective data, without the voice of the VAR hub, without an official record, the information gap will quickly be filled by rumors. The rumors from that match are even more dangerous than the referee’s decision. Hours after the final whistle, Indonesian social media began circulating angles recorded by supporters, isolating every touch of the ball. Each person saw a different image, and every supporter defended a different shirt. Meanwhile, PSM Makassar accepted a 1-3 defeat while Persib Bandung enjoyed their three opening-day points without fully erasing the VAR question. Persib’s victory today may have a question mark if a later investigation proves that the referee made a serious mistake. That would not be fair to Maung Bandung, a team that scored three goals and showed strong character to come from behind. As someone who works in football, I am not surprised that Greg Nwokolo was angry. He has the right to be angry because he played in matches where one decision could change the direction of a season. But his taunt that “VAR is broken from the start of the league” needs to be read carefully. VAR is not broken in a mechanical sense; it is broken in procedural terms. Machines do not make decisions on their own. People make decisions based on video, and people have no obligation to explain them publicly. What is missing here is the communication process. If the system operates as silently as an empty room, every small technical error will be interpreted as a conspiracy. As for whether VAR was wrong, I do not have the official recording. I can only rely on field observation and the story from Gelora Bandung Lautan Api: the referee pointed to the penalty spot before reviewing the footage, meaning that the initial view showed an offense clear enough to be punished. After watching the monitor, he changed his mind. Given the standard that requires clear and obvious evidence to overturn an on-field decision, this situation definitely needed to be checked from another camera angle. If Bulatovic made only a soft, theatrical touch, canceling the penalty makes sense. But if Mutombo did not touch the ball and extended his leg first, Bulatovic’s fall becomes a stronger case. What interests me most is how the players reacted. Luka Bulatovic was the one who felt contact. He stood up, looked at the referee and waited for an answer. The answer was given by a hand gesture: no penalty. Nobody explained. He may have felt confused, angry or deceived. If the referee could step forward, wear the headset and say, “I see light contact on the thigh, not enough for a foul,” or “The ball touched the opponent’s hand first,” the fury would have settled immediately. But when modern football brings in technology instead of bringing in explanation, it creates a generation of players and supporters who feel alienated from the very game they follow. This story can teach Southeast Asian football an old but forgotten lesson: technology never sits above communication. A match with VAR must be treated as a live broadcast with two layers of audience: those in the stadium and those watching on television. Both layers deserve official information about how a decision is made. Controversies like the one between Persib and PSM will soon become routine if things stop at the conclusion that one team was robbed and the other benefited. The more closely we look, the more clearly we see that what happened on September 6, 2026 was not necessarily a historic night for Indonesian football, but it was a good night to talk about the secrecy ruling inside the VAR rooms across Southeast Asia. Writing these lines from Marseille, I remember the feeling of standing in a stadium during the pandemic: only emotionless sounds from boots striking the ball, no screams, no anger, nothing to hide the truth. Today VAR is like an invisible spectator standing in the middle of the box, able to see everything but only turning on the microphone when someone asks. Greg Nwokolo asked. Darije Kalezic did not ask. Thousands of PSM supporters asked. But the VAR room did not answer. The football in that empty room keeps rolling, and the season is still long. If there is one character most deserving of sympathy in this match, I would choose neither Luka Bulatovic, nor Greg Nwokolo, nor the PSM supporters, but Darije Kalezic. He had to stand in front of the cameras and say that he needed to watch the replay. A head coach is not allowed to show emotion; his players, on the other hand, can. Kalezic carried the grievance of the whole team on his shoulders but could only smile awkwardly and promise to study the footage. For a European like him, working in Indonesia was already difficult; working with a silent VAR system was even harder. His coaching contract and reputation could be shaken by one jolt of an elbow in the penalty area. This is why I strongly believe that Southeast Asian football does not lack money to buy technology; it lacks a procedure that makes technology talk. The match ended 3-1, but the consequences of the canceled penalty might stick with the two teams longer than the goals from Balsa Sekulic or Uilliam Barros. Persib enjoyed the joy of an opening-day victory, while PSM must question themselves before trying to answer media questions. If the two clubs are smart, they will join forces and demand that the organizer release the VAR audio so that real transparency can be achieved. Supporters deserve to hear the reason, even if that reason hurts. Only then will complaints like Greg Nwokolo’s no longer be seen as the cry of a loser, but as a warning bell that pushes an entire football community to improve. The ultimate question is not where VAR went wrong, but whether we treat VAR as a tool or as a replacement for referees. Modern football does not kill spontaneity; it locks spontaneity in a tactical cage — and we are forgetting that the hand that opens the cage must still be a human voice of explanation.