Howard Webb responds to Luis Diaz disallowed goal vs Tottenham after VAR error

Howard Webb responds to Luis Diaz disallowed goal vs Tottenham after VAR error

PGMOL chief Howard Webb has responded to VAR’s error that led to Luis Diaz’s goal against Tottenham being ruled out for offside – despite the Liverpool player being onside when receiving the ball

The giant screen shows a goal from Luis Diaz of Liverpool against Tottenham being checked for offside by VAR

Howard Webb has responded to Liverpool star Luis Diaz’s disallowed goal vs Tottenham after VAR made an error in ruling the goal out for offside. The Premier League released the audio from the VAR room from the incident which highlighted the miscommunication between match officials as to what the actual decision was on the pitch – leading to the significant error.

In the audio clip, a visual picture is also provided which shows the 2D lines being drawn on the pitch and the second they touch Cristian Romero’s boot, the VAR decision is confirmed. Following the game restarting, the officials in the VAR room can be heard frantically discussing what to do next.

Messages are then sent to the fourth official requesting him to delay the game roughly seven seconds after the decision was made. However, Darren England – who was on VAR duty for the game – protests that they ‘can’t do anything’ as the game has already restarted.

Multiple expletives are also heard as it is made clear Diaz’s goal was onside. In the aftermath of the controversy, the PGMOL released a statement apologising to Liverpool with the affected club also posting one in response amid calls for the game to be replayed.

Speaking during the Match Officials Mic’d Up show, Webb analyses the error, what was said between officials and explains why the decision to not intervene with the game after play had restarted was taken. Webb said: “We took the unusual step of releasing the audio from this situation not long after it had happened.

“We wanted to show everybody, what was apparent to us, a very significant human error. A loss of concentration.

“We’re all disappointed that the VAR system didn’t step in to rectify a clear error it had seen on the disallowing of the goal. Nobody’s more disappointed than the officials themselves, they take pride in their work and they want to be a positive influence on the game and of course in this situation that wasn’t the case.

“Without VAR that goal would’ve still been a disallowed goal, but with VAR it exists to step in when we make a wrong decision. Of course we’re disappointed and our job then was to find out what happened and what we could do to prevent that sort of thing happening again.

“You hear at the very start of the clip that Darren England was checking the offside and he then goes into the process of whether Luis Diaz was in an offside position. He’s able to do that because the flag was correctly delayed by the on-field assistant referee.

“You can hear Darren is going through the process quite quickly. We get criticised for taking too long with making a decision sometimes and we want to be as quick as we can be, we do focus on efficiency, but never on the sacrifice of accuracy.

“Darren is trying to be quick, he puts a line across to Cristian Romero and that shows a very clear picture and then at that point, I think Darren loses sight of what the on-field decision was, sees the picture with Diaz in an onside position and quickly says ‘check complete’.

“The game is ready to start very quickly, he communicates to Simon Hooper, ‘check complete, check complete’. Simon hears that and assumes the check complete is for the offside and the game restarts.

“We know human error can happen in all walks of life and it happened here. One of the things we need to do is put things in place so that if there is a human error it doesn’t have the same impact as we saw on this occasion.

“One of those things is to reiterate some of those communication protocols that are really valuable in VAR to prevent these types of things happening. We want the on-field referee to communicate to the VAR what the on-field decision is clearly.

“Then the VAR to go back to the referee and acknowledge they have heard that clearly. We want the VAR to go through the process of checking the decision, giving clear direction to the replay operator to get the right angles, speaking to the assistant VAR as they go through so that the AVAR can be another checking balance.

“Then going back to the on-field referee and not just saying ‘check complete’, because what are you check completing? Saying ‘check complete goal confirmed’ or in this case ‘check complete offside confirmed’, then that’s another trigger for the on-field officials that they’re going in the wrong direction.

“So we’ve put quite a few steps in place so that this error does not happen again,” Webb added. When asked why the referee could not intervene with play and stop the game to go back and make the right decision, Webb responded: “I had quite a few people ask that question and understand why people would ask that question.

“The VAR and AVAR asked that question themselves when the penny dropped as to what had happened when 20 seconds had passed. At that point they considered whether they could intervene to stop the game but they recognise that the laws of the game are set by FIFA and the International FA Board (IFAB) and it doesn’t allow that.

“There’s obviously a process in place that sits in the laws of the game about how we use VAR to make sure it’s delivered consistently throughout every league in the world. It doesn’t allow you to go back in those circumstances and as such, decided not to intervene.

“I understand why those questions were asked and I know the IFAB, before this situation had happened, were going to do a full review into the laws of the game relating to VAR. It was written seven years ago, before that there had never been a game utilising VAR anywhere in the world, they put a protocol in place and it served the game really well.

“Now we’ve got living experience of situations, like what we saw with Diaz’s disallowed goal. Then we can feed into that and the IFAB will look at that as well and whether they need to tweak any of it, I’m sure they’ll be looking at this aspect of how VAR was used as well.”

When asked if Simon Hooper was aware of the situation in the VAR room whilst the game was going on, Webb replied: “No he wasn’t. I know people talk about the expression on his face but he didn’t know at all until the end of the game.

“I think it’s better if you don’t know, you want to stay focused on the game in the moment. I think it’s better if you don’t know and in this case, he certainly didn’t know.”

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