TOT v LIV

[JamesL]

I think what happened was the only course of action that the match officials could take, once the mistake was realised.
What needs to happen is 2 things:

1) better controls and protocol on communication of the decision, what needs to be checked, and also what has been checked and the expected outcome.
2) a change in law to allow for egregious mistakes, such as this one to be rectified.

It's interesting though as we do have laws now which allow for action to be taken after a restart (e.g. sanctions after a quick free kick, or sanctions that were attempted to be communicated before a restart) but the laws as they are now, are explicit, that a restart can't be changed.

 

[JamesL]

Klopp is now calling for the match to be replayed. Not unexpected following the wording in the original statement from Liverpool, but this isn't going away any time soon.

Jurgen Klopp demands Liverpool replay against Tottenham after VAR error disallowed Luis Diaz goal

Luis Diazs goal for Liverpool at Tottenham was mistakenly disallowed; PGMOL released the audio from the decision made by VAR officials Darren England and Dan Cook; Sky Sports News understands Premier Leagues stance remains unchanged - that a replay would not be considered

www.skysports.com

He has also said he doesn't expect it to be. And I don't think it will be either, for that matter.

Whilst he is saying it should be, the only way it happens is if Liverpool lodge an appeal... have they?

 

[Runner-Ref]

I don't deny that sometimes it will be the wrong thing to do and that we shouldn't be wildly making up rules with no thought. But to quote myself from earlier:


In some specific occasions, spirit of the game and common sense can be applied. As has been pointed out while I was typing this, Klopp has now floated the concept of a replay - surely you see that just fixing it in the moment would have been preferable to the possibility of the entire match having to be re-done?

Well, no. If they had gone back and gave the goal, Spurs would have asked for a replay. And they'd have had stronger grounds for one.

In an ideal world they could have gone back and fixed it, but the incident would never have happened in an ideal world.

 

[GraemeS]

Well, no. If they had gone back and gave the goal, Spurs would have asked for a replay. And they'd have had stronger grounds for one.

In an ideal world they could have gone back and fixed it, but the incident would never have happened in an ideal world.

"A goal is scored when the whole of the ball passes over the goal line, between the goalposts and under the crossbar, provided that no offence has been committed by the team scoring the goal"

All of that applies and yet a goal wasn't awarded. Sounds like a pretty clear violation of law to me. You're stuck between a rock and a hard place - disallow the goal and break law 10, or correct that mistake and break law 5 but end up with the right final result. Neither is *good*, but the latter is clearly preferable for me.

And either way, law has been knowingly broken. Such violations of law have precedent for a replay both at lower levels in England and also in the MLS under Webb's watch. I'm really not sure why there's so much consensus that the argument for a replay is so weak in this case, it seems the most obvious solution to me?

 

[GraemeS]

Also, Liverpool going through a whole long process and eventually getting a replay, then losing it would possibly be the funniest thing ever to happen to football!

 

[Paul_10]

I don't deny that sometimes it will be the wrong thing to do and that we shouldn't be wildly making up rules with no thought. But to quote myself from earlier:


In some specific occasions, spirit of the game and common sense can be applied. As has been pointed out while I was typing this, Klopp has now floated the concept of a replay - surely you see that just fixing it in the moment would have been preferable to the possibility of the entire match having to be re-done?

Let's be honest, Klopp would not even contemplate mentioning a replay if Liverpool has won the match. He(rightly) complains there is too many games so why add an extra one? The VAR simply followed protocal and your just opening a huge can of worms if you break that. Hopefully we do see a change though incase this happens again that allows a VAR to tell a referee to stop the game if a technical error has occured.

 

[BCMilan]

Klopp is being totally unreasonable by suggesing a reply. What happened to the RESPECT progarmme and the referee's decision is final ? There have been many debatable VAR decisions. Those clubs going to demand replays, aswell ?
There is no way of knowing whether this would have led to a goal because the Spurs keeper could well have relaxed / acted differently once he saw the flag go up etc. The whole thing is a mess !

As for Oli. He’s an administrator of the VAR hub. Why is he telling the officials to delay the game ? It's not in his remit

 

[GraemeS]

Let's be honest, Klopp would not even contemplate mentioning a replay if Liverpool has won the match. He(rightly) complains there is too many games so why add an extra one? The VAR simply followed protocal and your just opening a huge can of worms if you break that. Hopefully we do see a change though incase this happens again that allows a VAR to tell a referee to stop the game if a technical error has occured.

I don't see any problem with that particularly. Criteria for a replay should be a) a clear non-subjective error in fact and/or law and b) a replay has the possibility of giving the "wronged" team a better result. Otherwise what's the point?

And huge can of worms? Apply the above two very simple criteria and you end up with two replays required in the 4 and a bit seasons since VAR was introduced:
* This example
* Sheff Utd v Villa (in part because the result as-was ended up directly costing Bournemouth relegation)
* (maybe 3 if we include the Saka example briefly discussed)

That doesn't exactly fit the description of "huge can of worms" to me. Less than one replay a season doesn't break anything.

 

[GraemeS]

Klopp is being totally unreasonable by suggesing a reply. What happened to the RESPECT progarmme and the referee's decision is final ? There have been many debatable VAR decisions. Those clubs going to demand replays, aswell ?

Almost nothing else has been this objectively wrong. It's really easy to limit the quantity of worms with some very simple caveats.

There is no way of knowing whether this would have led to a goal because the Spurs keeper could well have relaxed / acted differently once he saw the flag go up etc. The whole thing is a mess !

The Spurs keeper did not see the flag go up. The flag was delayed until after the goal was scored, as per VAR protocol.

As for Oli. He’s an administrator of the VAR hub. Why is he telling the officials to delay the game ? It's not in his remit

Why this obsession with protocol? He and the RO are the only ones who noticed there'd been a mistake - if they both sat in their seat and didn't say anything because they're not refs, no one would have even known there was a mistake until TV picked up on it post-match! At least they tried to help the VAR fix the error, even if he did react too slowly and indecisively to actually do anything about it.

 

[santa sangria]

Re: Klopp - the 250m or whatever all in for champions league qualification that he is tasked with delivering makes it quite easy to understand why he’d ask for a reply.

We should presume that ManCity’s Liverpool’s army of lawyers are looking at it. It’s a business and they are duty bound.

What was the MLS replay?

 

[RustyRef]

There is zero good reason to prioritise protocol over what I think Liverpool called "sporting integrity". In real life, where there is a gap in the law, it can often be set by precedent initially and enshrined into formal laws at a later date. Hooper/Oliver could have made that decision. And they should have been empowered and given the information to do so.

You talk about England being thrown to the wolves - well why not? He made a major mistake. He was flappy, slow and unresponsive when that mistake was pointed out, causing the opportunity for an easy fix to be missed. He failed to escalate it appropriately to the match day officials - who could either have set a precedent and fixed it formally by awarding the goal, or informally by encouraging Spurs to do the sporting thing and let Diaz score. And he's had similar high profile issues using the VAR software before, when Saka was offside against Liverpool last season and it was missed with him in the booth.

Like I said earlier in the thread, he's clearly just not competent in that context. He might be a perfectly fine referee, but he's well below the standard required for VAR duty and shouldn't be used for that until significant retraining is carried out. Or just give the replay operator the job!

There are games in England, albeit at lower levels, that have been replayed due to the referee changing his decision after play had restarted. It is clearly incorrect in law, there's no way a PGMOL SG1 referee is going to do it. You can hear that in the almost resigned reaction of England and Cook.

 

[RustyRef]

And we're in a worse situation that we would have been if he'd been sensible instead of dogmatic. In both cases.

Again, we're struggling with the fact that football chooses to call its rules "laws" and that confuses people into thinking there's something morally wrong with looking outside them, in the way there can be with actual laws. Or as is impossible as with laws of nature.

It wouldn't have been a moral failing to decide that the laws aren't fit for purpose in this instance, or that spirit of the game might trump them. Or even to go one step up my "hierarchy of solutions" and refer it to the lead official for them to make the call.

OK, let's say the officials were pragmatic and gave the goal even though play had been restarted. Spurs end up losing the game, and they ask for it to be replayed. It just moves the problem to somewhere else, and Spurs would have a much better chance of getting their wish as the decision would have been very clearly incorrect in law.

It isn't anywhere near as simple as you are making out.

 

[socal lurker]

While I get the “common sense“ idea of fixing this after the Laws allow, I think expecting that a ref team could get there in thr heat of the moment is ludicrous. We live in a soccer world where IFAB has spent the last decade reigning in referee discretion and adding rigidity in the interests of consistency—heck, they took the words “in the opinion of the referee” out of Law 12. In that context, expecting that a R would—with no time to think about it and the ball in play—violate the long clear edict that decisions can only be changed up to a restart taking place, is totally unrealistic.

I’d add that the argument this is a mistake of law is just simply wrong. OS was called on the field because the AR made the (factually incorrect) determination that a player was in OSP. It is unambiguously a mistake of fact upon which the Referee decision, based on input from the AR, is final.

It was a mistake by the AR. And a really bad mistake by the VAR and AVAR. But it’s just a mistake. And the world of VAR gets people more up in arms about it. No one would remotely have suggested an incorrect OS call could be grounds for a replay, no matter how egregious, before VAR.

 

[Tim Punter]

Liverpool-Tottenham replay possible under Uefa rules loophole

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has called for the match to be replayed after Luis Diaz’s goal was wrongly ruled out for offside

www.independent.co.uk

According to UEFA rules

A replay would be possible over incorrect application of laws, rather than an outright mistake: since the VAR actually identified that Diaz was onside, the correct application of the laws of the game would have been to award a goal, but that evidently didn't happen.

But appeal needed to happen within 12hrs of the game. The article explains that Liverpool may use this argument for a compensation claim.

Not studied thr UEFA law book and don’t intend to start, but an interesting article

 

[CaptainsPlease]

Liverpool-Tottenham replay possible under Uefa rules loophole

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has called for the match to be replayed after Luis Diaz’s goal was wrongly ruled out for offside

www.independent.co.uk

According to UEFA rules

A replay would be possible over incorrect application of laws, rather than an outright mistake: since the VAR actually identified that Diaz was onside, the correct application of the laws of the game would have been to award a goal, but that evidently didn't happen.

But appeal needed to happen within 12hrs of the game. The article explains that Liverpool may use this argument for a compensation claim.

Not studied thr UEFA law book and don’t intend to start, but an interesting article

This isn't a UEFA competition, so the article is severely misleading.

 

[Mr Dean]

There is little prospect of a replay because the referee deciding Diaz was offside is an error in fact rather than an error in law. However, Liverpool will have stronger grounds for a replay than other victims of VAR errors because of the procedural error made by the VAR. I have scanned the VAR protocol and found this:

"If the ‘check’ indicates a probable ‘clear and obvious error’ or ‘serious missed incident’, the VAR will communicate this information to the referee, who will then decide whether or not to initiate a ‘review’"

Obviously, the VAR failed to complete this step in the VAR protocol which will give the Liverpool lawyers something to argue about should they go down this route. There might also be something in the competition rules stating that the VAR protocol is to be followed; therefore, there may be a potential competition rule breach.

 

[JamesL]

There is little prospect of a replay because the referee deciding Diaz was offside is an error in fact rather than an error in law. However, Liverpool will have stronger grounds for a replay than other victims of VAR errors because of the procedural error made by the VAR. I have scanned the VAR protocol and found this:

"If the ‘check’ indicates a probable ‘clear and obvious error’ or ‘serious missed incident’, the VAR will communicate this information to the referee, who will then decide whether or not to initiate a ‘review’"

Obviously, the VAR failed to complete this step in the VAR protocol which will give the Liverpool lawyers something to argue about should they go down this route. There might also be something in the competition rules stating that the VAR protocol is to be followed; therefore, there may be a potential competition rule breach.

I think it's more likely there is a clause the other way.

 

[GraemeS]

OK, let's say the officials were pragmatic and gave the goal even though play had been restarted. Spurs end up losing the game, and they ask for it to be replayed. It just moves the problem to somewhere else, and Spurs would have a much better chance of getting their wish as the decision would have been very clearly incorrect in law.

It isn't anywhere near as simple as you are making out.

Law 10 has already been broken. So it's not a case of "break law vs not break law", it's a case of "which law break is most in line with spirit of the game?" And it's still wrong for the VAR to make that call rather than passing it to the team leader.

 

[GraemeS]

There is little prospect of a replay because the referee deciding Diaz was offside is an error in fact rather than an error in law. However, Liverpool will have stronger grounds for a replay than other victims of VAR errors because of the procedural error made by the VAR. I have scanned the VAR protocol and found this:

"If the ‘check’ indicates a probable ‘clear and obvious error’ or ‘serious missed incident’, the VAR will communicate this information to the referee, who will then decide whether or not to initiate a ‘review’"

Obviously, the VAR failed to complete this step in the VAR protocol which will give the Liverpool lawyers something to argue about should they go down this route. There might also be something in the competition rules stating that the VAR protocol is to be followed; therefore, there may be a potential competition rule breach.

They decided he was onside and then didn't award the goal. Hence me framing it as a breach of law 10.

 

[Mr Dean]

They decided he was onside and then didn't award the goal. Hence me framing it as a breach of law 10.

The referee decided that Diaz was offside and didn't award the goal. This is correct application of Law 10. The referee's error is factual rather than legal. The VAR knew that Diaz was onside but it is not his role to award the goal in accordance with Law 10; it's his role to inform the referee that a clear and obvious error has occurred (hence my earlier post regarding procedural error). Ultimately, it's the referee's decision whether or not to award a goal. Nobody has "breached" law 10.