The excitement was great after Liverpool FC’s 2-1 defeat at Tottenham Hotspur. The reason: a wrongly disallowed offside goal by the Reds – now further consequences have been announced.
Last Saturday, Liverpool took the lead through Luis Diaz, but his goal was wrongly disallowed by referee Simon Hooper (35th). The scandal: The VAR team reviewed the scene and did not correct the wrong decision. Almost in return, Heung-Min Son took the lead on the other side – and the Reds were on the losing side.
Liverpool coach Jürgen Klopp spoke afterwards of “the most unfair circumstances and the craziest decisions”, while Liverpool FC sharply criticised the referees’ organisation PGMOL (Professional Game Match Officials Limited) and even questioned the “integrity of the sport”.
The referees’ association quickly acknowledged the mishap, but attributed it to a “human error”. But that was not enough to calm tempers, nor was the punishment meted out to the VAR in charge, Darren England, and his VAR assistant, Dan Cook.
“Lack of concentration and a loss of focus “
The matter remained on the agenda. Now the referees’ association PGMOL released the audio recordings of the communication between the referees and also stated in a detailed report to the 20 Premier League clubs that the video assistant’s error was due to a “lapse in concentration and a loss of focus”.
The audio recordings show that the VAR initially believed it had made the correct decision. The mistake was only noticed by the officials after the game had been restarted. By the time play resumed with an indirect free kick for Tottenham, it was too late to resolve the misunderstanding.
Now the PGMOL stressed that “important lessons” had been learned from the incident and that in future “accuracy should take precedence over efficiency”. To ensure this, a new VAR protocol has been developed to improve the clarity of communication between referees. This is to explicitly include confirmation by the VAR assistant before a decision is communicated to the referee on the field.
