USMNT Legend DaMarcus Beasley Is 100% NOT a Fan of VAR at the World Cup

DaMarcus Beasley played his entire career before a replay booth could erase a goal, and he would happily go back to it.

Asked on the show whether he likes VAR after a recent U.S. goal sat under a three-minute review over whether a heel was slightly offside, the USMNT legend did not hedge. "It's disruptive," Beasley said. "I'm on the bandwagon of I don't like VAR."

He is not blind to what the technology does well. Offsides calls, red cards, penalty kicks, those are the spots where Beasley grants that a second look helps. But the trade he sees is the soul of the sport for a few inches of precision, and he is not sure it is worth it.

"I wish that the game would go back to just human error," he said. "Everyone makes mistakes, and that's why we all love sports. Sometimes you're at a high, sometimes you're at a low, but that's sports. That's what it is."

Beasley knows which way the wind is blowing, even as he plants his flag against it. The game has taken on too much money and too much technology for any of this to reverse. "It's here to stay," he said. "I can tell you that. But I'm not a fan of it."

Rich pushed on the part that makes VAR feel foreign to American eyes. The show recently had Antonio Freeman on, the father of Alex Freeman, and Rich said the disputed goal felt like an NFL play, the kind where two feet come down in the back of the end zone and everyone stares at seventeen different angles trying to decide what they just saw.

Then Rich laid out the scenario that bothers him most. One attacker is clearly offside. A second attacker is onside by a couple of inches. Both of them are in the goalkeeper's face, and one of them puts the ball in the net. How is the clearly offside player not a problem in that moment?

Beasley did not pretend it always made sense. "That's the game. That's the rules," he said. "You learn how to kind of maneuver and manage those situations."

He let the contradiction sit there rather than smooth it over. "Sometimes it can be confusing. Sometimes it's not always fair. But that is the game."

That is the honest part. Beasley is not arguing the calls are wrong. He is arguing that chasing perfect calls cost the game something it used to have, and no amount of replay angles is going to give it back.