Referee in the pillory
Liverpool are taking action against “significant human error”.
October 2, 2023, 11:14 a.m
The regular goal that was disallowed from Liverpool FC still has an impact. “Never again” should such a mistake be allowed to happen, the club demands from team manager Jürgen Klopp. His team lost the game against Tottenham as a result of the referee’s indisputable performance.
Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool FC is examining the chances of an objection to the score after the serious video evidence glitch in the 1-2 win at Tottenham. The club is “examining the options available,” the Reds said. In the case of the serious VAR mistake, the rules were not applied correctly and this led to a distortion of competition, Liverpool FC argued.
Classifying the breakdown as a human error was “unacceptable,” emphasized Liverpool FC. There must be an investigation into the events “with full transparency”. This is of great importance for the future decision-making process, which will affect all clubs. “Lessons must be learned to improve processes to ensure that situations like this can never happen again,” the club statement continued.
In the game at Tottenham Hotspur, a goal by Liverpool’s Luis Diaz in the 34th minute was wrongly disallowed for offside. The responsible referee association then admitted that this had been a “significant human error”. The video referee thought that the referee on the pitch had judged Luis Diaz’s goal to be valid and therefore did not intervene. The referees in the stadium saw their actual offside decision confirmed. The scene fueled the debate about video evidence in English football. The affected video referees have been withdrawn from further assignments for the time being.
Immediately after the game, coach Klopp was furious that it had been the “most unfair circumstances and craziest decisions”. In addition to the mistakenly missed goal, his team also received two sending-offs.
The “Guardians” then made a similarly damning verdict. “It is absurd that large parts of the strenuous VAR debate can be boiled down to the fact that there is a fundamental lack of competence,” said reporter Barney Ronay: “These are professionally trained officials who are incapable of using their own technique.” to use correctly “in order to make an obvious decision” correctly. Then he summed up with a mixture of sarcasm and cynicism: “Imagine if these people were responsible for air traffic safety.”