The emotion of victory and the intoxication that followed Jonathan Rowe’s goal in added time were not enough to calm Marseille’s anger. Medhi Benatia expressed his thoughts, which earned him a summons before the disciplinary committee, and the Olympian supporters were very angry with the performance of Mr. Bastien and his assessors.
There were several contentious decisions during this match. The main one was the second yellow card given to Leonardo Balerdi, which may seem harsh, because it was given very early in the match (which the referee was not obliged to take into account), and because Alexandre Lacazette also seemed to be holding the Argentinian defender at the start of their duel. There was also the penalty awarded for a handball by Valentin Rongier, who touched the ball with his shoulder (which is not necessarily punishable), but who defended with his arms outstretched.
Lacazette and Cherki offside, or not?
But for Marseille supporters, the pill is hard to swallow concerning two other situations, on the action that led to the penalty and on the goal of the 2-2 scored by Cherki, where the angle of the shot suggests an offside. These two actions were reviewed by the VAR which, with the help of the famous lines drawn on the field, considered each time that the Lyon player was in a legal position.
The Football Offsides account was alerted to the subject, and drew its own lines, using perspective, to arrive at a different verdict. On his goal, Rayan Cherki is not offside, since he is behind the ball at the moment of the pass. On the other hand, on the action of the penalty, Lacazette was offside (according to Football Offsides).
What can we learn from all this? That these two offside situations did not influence the score (Rulli had stopped Lacazette’s penalty). That Mr Bastien, personally targeted by Benatia, is not responsible for this specific point: under no circumstances, even if he has a doubt, does the central referee view the offside situations; this is the mission of the assistants and referees in charge of the VAR, Mr Bastien just had to decide on Rongier’s handball when he consulted the images. Finally, it is not a discovery that the system has a margin of error concerning offsides. A fortiori, there is nothing to ensure that the lines drawn by Football Offsides are more precise than those of the referees who officiated on Sunday evening.
