Thankfully, Sterling was onside, so there was no repeat of what happened to Liverpool. But speaking on The Footballer’s Football Podcast, Antonio said that referees were making things unnecessarily hard for themselves.
“No way!” exclaimed the West Ham United man, after being told of the Sterling incident. “That’s to be fair, I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this, but I feel like sometimes officials kill themselves even more than necessary.
“They have done something the week before – just stick to what you’ve done. Just go ‘you know what I have made a decision, it’s happened, he’s done it and the fact that the referee did it last week I’m now going to do it this week. I’m not going to change it this week!’
“‘This is now the rule, even if it wasn’t the rule, this is now the rule for the season. If the game goes on, we’re not stopping the game.’
“The fact that he has done it this week, what on earth is going to happen next? It’s actually a madness.”
We’re not completely sure of the point Michail is trying to make here. The issue with Sterling goal was actually the opposite of the Diaz one.
In the Chelsea game, the referee restarted the game in error. He confused something the VAR told him with a command to give the goal and the game back underway.
For Liverpool, it was the VAR who made the mistake in telling the game to be restarted with the wrong decision standing.
But either way, the general point stands firm. The referees are getting themselves in trouble over basic mistakes.
It is of course coincidence that the problem in the Chelsea match happened just a week after such a high-profile blunder in the previous round of games.
But you can’t help but feel that until a major rehaul and reshaping is done, these costly errors will keep on happening.
It hopefully won’t be Liverpool on the wrong end of it next time, but there’s every chance they will be again in the future. Time for something to be done about it.
