Former Premier League star Alan Shearer likes Philadelphia and Brenden Aaronson, but less so VAR

Shearer, a former star player who was at NBC’s Premier League fan fest, called Aaronson "a huge plus" for Leeds United.

Some 9,000 fans attended NBC's Premier League fan fest at Dilworth Park on Sunday.Read moreJonathan Tannenwald / Staff

Published Oct. 18, 2022, 2:23 a.m. ET

Alan Shearer knows a passionate sports town when he sees one, as a lifelong devotee of Newcastle United’s soccer cauldron. And when he came to Philadelphia this past weekend, it didn’t take long for the place to feel familiar.

“I’ve loved it,” the former Newcastle and England star told The Inquirer while he was in town for NBC’s Premier League fan fest. “I live in Newcastle; they’re mad for football and mad for sport. And I get that feeling here — as soon as I was here on Thursday evening, that struck me.”

Philadelphia’s fan fest was Shearer’s fifth as a guest analyst for NBC, after visiting Los Angeles, D.C., New York and Austin, Texas.

“I think without doubt, this is the most passionate I’ve seen it,” he said. “I mean, the numbers here have been crazy — the time they started to queue up. … I was looking forward to it and it has blown me away, the enthusiasm for football.”

That was a reference to the lines that wrapped around City Hall long before the gates opened at 6 a.m. each morning. Some fans even showed up late the night before to claim the first places. When all was said and done, NBC announced attendances of 7,000 on Saturday and 9,000 on Sunday.

Shearer also learned of Philly’s love for one of its hometown heroes, Brenden Aaronson. While there weren’t as many Leeds United fans at Dilworth Park as Arsenal and Manchester United supporters, almost all the Leeds fans who were there had Aaronson’s name and No. 7 on their backs.

Most weekends, Shearer is at the studios of England’s BBC as an analyst on Match of the Day, the nation’s top soccer highlights show. Aaronson has been on the network’s screens plenty thanks to his defensive pressing and breathtaking dribbles. He had a good shot to score Sunday against first-place Arsenal in the 76th minute, but the attempt was saved and Arsenal went on to win 1-0.

“I think he’s done remarkably well, for lack of experience and for all of those things,” Shearer said of the 21-year-old who joined Leeds from Austria’s Red Bull Salzburg in the summer. “Every time we’ve watched him on a weekend, on Match of the Day, he’s impressed. And by the looks and the reaction from the Leeds fans, they enjoy watching him as well — and so they should. He’s been a huge plus.”

While almost everything went right at Dilworth Park over the weekend, not all went right on the fields of play. At Leeds, the video review center gave the home team a penalty kick (only for Patrick Bamford to miss it), then controversially overturned a second Leeds penalty (and Arsenal red card) later.

And in the biggest game of the day, struggling Liverpool hosting Manchester City, the first-place visitors had a penalty kick taken away by video review, then went on to suffer their first loss of the season.

Video review hasn’t been implemented as well in England as it has been here, in part because some English traditionalists don’t want it to succeed. In the U.S., by contrast, soccer referees spend as much of their time off watching other American sports as anyone else. They understand this country’s tradition of getting the call right with replays, and have been happy to help soccer work the same way.

Shearer has seen the perspectives from both sides of the Atlantic, and understands them.

“There’s still as many rows and arguments with VAR [as] without it, which clearly wasn’t meant to be the case,” he said. “I know it’s subjective. It’s still got to be improved in our country, and it’s not going away, so we have to accept it and understand that it’s there to stay.”

At the end of this year, former Premier League referee Howard Webb will step down from his longtime role overseeing referees in America’s leagues, and return to his native England to oversee that country’s officials. Shearer is one of many public figures who hopes Webb helps improve how things work there, and the public’s perceptions.

“He has got a big job on his hands, because it hasn’t gone as well as what we would have hoped,” Shearer said. “But if it’s ran correctly and implemented right, then it can be a good system.”