PGMOL chief refereeing officer Howard Webb has broken his silence on the VAR mishap that occurred between Liverpool and Tottenham, revealing that action has already been taken to avoid further errors of the sort. Reds star Luis Diaz saw a goal wrongly ruled out last month against Spurs for offside, despite replays showing that the winger had been played on by defender Cristian Romero.
Diaz’s goal would have given Liverpool a shock 1-0 lead against Tottenham, having been reduced to ten men just moments earlier, but ultimately did not have an impact on the final score. Jurgen Klopp’s side went on to lose the match 2-1 after a last-minute Joel Matip own goal was decisive.
PGMOL quickly apologised for their error, with it being revealed that VAR thought the on-field decision was allowing Diaz’s goal to stand, rather than it being ruled out – thus ‘check complete’ was approving of the opposite action. Speaking about the incident on Mic’d Up, Webb explained that he felt that the simplicity of the decision played a role in the error: “You hear at the start, Darren England (VAR) saying ‘checking the offside’. You can hear that Darren is going through the process pretty quickly.
“He puts a line across on Cristian Romero and that shows a very clear picture and I think at that point Darren loses sight of what the on-field decision was, sees the clear picture of Diaz being in an onside position and quickly ‘check completes’ it.”
Webb then revealed that the officials at the game had second thoughts about what had happened and even considered intervening to delay the match following the mishap, but ultimately felt that they were unable to take such action due to the laws in place. Asked by Michael Owen why VAR did not put a halt to the match after such a significant error, Webb replied: “The VAR and AVAR (assistant VAR) asked themselves that question too.
“When the penny dropped as to what had happened, I think 20 seconds had passed and at that point, they considered whether or not they could intervene to stop the game but they recognised that The Laws of the Game, which are set by FIFA and International FA board, doesn’t allow that. It doesn’t allow you to go back in those circumstances and as such, they decided not to intervene.”
Webb went on to explain that changes have already been made within the VAR process to ensure that further calamities of this nature are not made simply due to human error, with officials now being instructed to consistently outline the on-field decision that has been made when an incident is being reviewed.
He concluded: “One of the things that has been brought into sharp focus is we want the on-field referee to communicate to the VAR what the decision is very clearly. Not just saying ‘check complete’ – because what are you checking? We have put a lot of steps in place to ensure the error we saw doesn’t happen again.”
