“Breaking it down to a single statement only emphasises the sheer weirdness of it: A goal was not awarded because the officials decided that it was a goal. Welcome to football in 2023.”
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Jurgen Klopp reviews the Tottenham Hotspur game
Everyone was with Liverpool until they started to get uneasy about it. It seems that being on the receiving end of a farcical decision is one thing, but speaking out about it is quite another.
Fans of all clubs have their injustices of course, and sure enough they have all been getting trotted out over the past 48 hours, but in the majority of cases those were subjective decisions. This was something else entirely.
Breaking it down to a single sentence only emphasises the sheer weirdness of it: A goal was not awarded because the officials decided that it was a goal . Welcome to football in 2023.
We won’t go over it all again because you’re all bored of it by now, but the key point to take away from it is that somehow, for whatever reason that may become apparent, both Darren England and Dan Cook were of the view that Luis Diaz had given the 10 men of Liverpool the lead at Tottenham when he fired into the net. Plenty of other people were too, like the thousands of Liverpool fans at the other end of the ground, those watching in pubs without the sound on, and those of us in the press box who thought Diaz looked level at worst.
There were plenty of clues that he’d been flagged offside though, including Diaz stopping his celebration, the gleeful cheer from the home fans towards the away end and, crucially, the man standing there with his flag in the air. That was a big one.
Luis Diaz had his celebrations cut short on Saturday (
Image:
Getty Images)
After an exasperated Jurgen Klopp took it all fairly mildly on Saturday night there was a sense that everyone was waiting to see what Liverpool as a club would do, and they haven’t been left disappointed. But away from the tedious whataboutery that the statement has spawned, there is a chance that a club acting in this way and demanding answers could introduce change, with two fairly simple steps available to be put in place pretty quickly.
The first is obvious.
The semi-automated offside system worked well at the World Cup and continues to work well in the Champions League. It surely wouldn’t take much effort to bring it into the Premier League fairly swiftly. Presumably that wouldn’t be dozing off when analysing what was, at its base level, a terrible decision from the on-field assistant referee, and then the humans could act in due course.
The semi-automated offside system worked well at the World Cup in Qatar (
Image:
Getty Images)
The second change would require an alteration to the referees’ sacred ‘letter of the law’, but it is time to have a look at that and update it for the VAR age.
Yes it is nice that the Dog & Duck vs The King’s Head is officiated subject to the same laws as Tottenham Hotspur vs Liverpool, but these days they might as well be different sports. You could call it a ‘significant human error law’ if you like, but an emergency halting of the game when a serious error affecting a non-subjective decision has been made, and a goal given or ruled out as a result, would have saved us all the hot air, fume and counter-fume over the past couple of days.
Presumably when England and/or Cook realised their error Tottenham had restarted the game with a free-kick, and so - by that letter of the law - the officials felt powerless to correct their mistake. They must have been talking about it though, which might explain why the ‘VAR checking’ graphic was still on the big screen at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for a while after the restart, confusing us all.
Let’s give England and Cook the benefit of the doubt and say that they’d worked out their cock up within 10 seconds of Tottenham restarting the game. Nothing happened in those 10 seconds, so why should they be prioritised over a goal being scored? Goals are big things in football. This isn’t basketball where another score will be along shortly.
A Brentford goal at Arsenal was allowed in February after a VAR error (
Image:
PA)
Bringing in a law such as this one would have helped with the serious errors that went against Arsenal at home to Brentford and Brighton at Crystal Palace on the same day last season, February 11, when incorrect offside lines were drawn and goals were wrongly given and disallowed as a result.
In the current avalanche of complaints from fans about decisions that went against their sides these are the only recent ones in any way comparable with what happened at Tottenham, but they could have been corrected had officials been able to rectify them quickly enough. What is an assistant VAR’s job anyway?
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You’d still get your howlers if you brought in this law, and subjective decisions such as Curtis Jones’ red card will always remain open to interpretation. You’ll also get the madness of cameras not being able to pick things up correctly as went for and against Liverpool at home to Wolves and away to Arsenal respectively last season. VAR will always find a way to VAR.
This is a chance to correct the factual, undeniable errors the people operating the system can occasionally make though, so can we not just take it? Or are we all just too preoccupied with who can shout the loudest and prove that their tribe is somehow better than a different one?
That seems like a significant human error to me.
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