The Premier League match between Liverpool and Tottenham last weekend resulted in an improbable VAR failure.
The Reds have it bad and it couldn’t be more understandable. Saturday while they played on the pitch at Tottenham as part of the 7e lifted from the Premier League, Jürgen Klopp’s men saw their opening score by Luis Diaz unfairly invalidated. For non-existent offside. Video assistance, naturally, should have taken over and corrected the error of judgment of the referees present on the playing area. Yes, but the VAR assessors failed for totally ubiquitous reasons.
Very quickly, the blunder was recognized and put down to a technical failure. But while Liverpool conceded a goal two minutes later – losing the match 2-1 in the end after suffering two sending-offs – the explanation is quite different. Simply mind-blowing. Earlier this week, the body responsible for refereeing professional football matches in England – the PGMOL – admitted that a “ significant human error had occurred “. Not without relaying via the Premier League the soundtrack of the exchanges between officials on the action of the scandal.
“ After the pitch officials disallowed the goal for offside, the verification phase and process began and was correctly executed by VARexplains the PGMOL in a press release. The choice of kick-off point was accurate and the use of a single 2D line on the second-most-back defender’s foot was also correctly positioned. » Images which clearly prove the validity of Luis Diaz’s goal, not at all offside at the start of the analyzed phase of play.
Klopp calls for a “replay”
“ In a moment of inattention and loss of concentration, VAR lost sight of the on-field decision and incorrectly communicated “check complete”, thus inadvertently confirming the on-field decision. He did this without any dialogue with the VAR assistant », continues the PGMOL. A few seconds later, as the game resumes in London, the referees dedicated to VAR realize their blunder, swearing to support it, but the damage is done. “ The VAR team considered whether the match could be stopped at that point, but the VAR and its assistant concluded that the VAR protocol provided for by the laws of the game did not allow this, and decided that an intervention was not possible since play had resumed », concludes the PGMOL.
Read also: Premier League: The results Premier League: The ranking
Since then, the refereeing body has apologized to the Liverpool club but on the Mersey side, the anger has not subsided. For Jürgen Klopp, who this Wednesday certainly did not seek to overwhelm the officials responsible for this blunder, there is little more than one possibility of repairing this error. “ I’m 56 years old, I’ve been in football for a long time. I don’t always handle it well but I’m used to bad decisionssaid the German coach this Wednesday at a press conference. But something like that, as far as I remember, never happened. That’s why I think a replay would be the right thing to do. » In other words, match to be replayed. A highly improbable outcome unfortunately.
