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LONDON — England’s Premier League has long prided itself on the kind of soccer it sells to the world, a compelling product that it bills as a unique brand of high-octane, fast-and-furious soccer. So it is perhaps little surprise that the league’s introduction this season of video assistant refereeing — the game-pausing, controversy-inducing, fan-aggravating replay system in growing use worldwide — has been an uncommonly bad fit here, a case of sound and fury meeting a handbrake.
The new system has dominated coverage of the first four months of the season, where hardly a week has gone by without a major V.