China - Haiti

[Tealeaf]

How in the world was that called as a caution?

Standards at this tournament are abysmal.

 

[Mr Dean]

There was an interesting bit of VAR protocol here regarding the Chinese penalty kick which was awarded without an on field review. I'm guessing that the VAR told the referee that the Chinese player was onside and this changed the referee's on field decision to penalty kick and the VAR did not see this as clearly and obviously wrong. However, I think the referee should have gone to the monitor to sort all of this out because it looked like the Chinese player dived - this also would have helped 'sell' the decision. Alternatively, the VAR could have recognised that 'no penalty' was not clearly and obviously wrong and not intervened?

 

[socal lurker]

There was an interesting bit of VAR protocol here regarding the Chinese penalty kick which was awarded without an on field review. I'm guessing that the VAR told the referee that the Chinese player was onside and this changed the referee's on field decision to penalty kick and the VAR did not see this as clearly and obviously wrong. However, I think the referee should have gone to the monitor to sort all of this out because it looked like the Chinese player dived - this also would have helped 'sell' the decision. Alternatively, the VAR could have recognised that 'no penalty' was not clearly and obviously wrong and not intervened?

The VAR absolutely cannot decide a PK call would be wrong and not tell the R the OS was wrong. That would be a blatant breach of procedure.

Assuming the R had a PK without the OS (which is the only thing that makes sense and was presumably told to the VAR, the only way the PK can go away is if the VAR believes the PK call itself was a C&O error, In which case the R would need to do an OFR to make that decision.

This is another example of how the verbal announcements are worthless. A useful verbal announcement would have explained that the R had the PK on the field but the OS came first so that once the OS was reversed, the PK was awarded because the whistle had not blown before the foul occurred.

This is a play that I think could have been helped by the protocol used in the MLS, in which the R does an OFR for OS. While I’m not a fan of that in general, here the optics of the R going to the monitor might have helped make the scenario less confusing.