PGMOL has admitted Luis Diaz’s disallowed goal for Liverpool against Tottenham should have stood following a “significant human error”.
Diaz thought he had given his side the lead on 34 minutes when he slotted home after being played in by Mohamed Salah, but he was denied by the offside flag. Replays appeared to show Diaz was in line with the trailing leg of Cristian Romero.
VAR lines were not provided with the replays. PGMOL, the body responsible for match officials across English football, stated that VAR had failed to intervene with the decision and promised a full review into the incident. Darren England was on VAR duty for the fixture.
A PGMOL statement read: “PGMOL acknowledge a significant human error occurred during the first half of Tottenham Hotspur v Liverpool.
“The goal by Luiz Diaz was disallowed for offside by the on-field team of match officials.
“This was a clear and obvious factual error and should have resulted in the goal being awarded through VAR intervention, however, the VAR failed to intervene.
“PGMOL will conduct a full review into the circumstances which led to the error.”
Jurgen Klopp said the retrospective PGMOL statement “won’t help” anyone.
“Who does that help now? We won’t get points for it, it won’t help,” the Liverpool manager said. “Nobody expects 100% right decisions but we thought when VAR came in it might make things easier. The decision was made really quick and it changed the momentum of the game.”
Nine-man Liverpool were beaten 2-1 by Spurs following Joel Matip’s stoppage time own goal.
Liverpool were reduced to 10 players after 26 minutes when Curtis Jones was shown a straight red card for his challenge on Yves Bissouma. The Liverpool midfielder had initially been yellow-carded by referee Simon Hooper before a VAR intervention.
Diogo Jota received two yellow cards in the space of two second-half minutes as Liverpool played the final 21 minutes with nine men.
Cody Gakpo cancelled out Son Heung-min’s opener in first-half stoppage time and Klopp’s side appeared to have held on for a point, before Matip turned Pedro Porro’s cross into his own net in the 96th minute.
Today’s incident will increase calls for the Premier League to adopt semi-automated offsides, as seen at the 2022 World Cup.
The benefit of a semi-automated system is there is no need to draw or activate lines.
Instead, a virtual offside line is generated automatically in addition to accurately identifying skeleton points — including head, toes, upper arm and knees — on multiple players simultaneously. Ball-tracking highlights where the ball is when it is kicked and all of this is communicated to the VAR official via a real-time alert system using artificial intelligence.
Although the technology is doing the hard work, the VAR is still required to validate the proposed decision and then inform the on-field referee. That is why it is known as ‘semi-automated’. Officials don’t need to intervene by drawing or activating lines on clips and stills of incidents.
As a result, human error should be reduced.
GO DEEPER
Tottenham 2-1 Liverpool: More red cards for Liverpool, more late joy for Spurs
(Photo: Visionhaus/Getty Images)
