PGMOL technical director Howard Webb has admitted that he was left "disappointed" with a horrific officiating blunder in Liverpool's defeat to Tottenham Hotspur last month, which saw a Luis Diaz goal wrongly disallowed for offside.
The Reds' unbeaten start to the 2023-24 campaign came to an end on that fateful evening in North London, where Jurgen Klopp's side held out with nine men before succumbing to an injury-time Joel Matip own goal.
Not long after Curtis Jones was given his marching orders, Mohamed Salah's through ball to Diaz ended with the Colombian firing home from the right-hand side of the box, but the linesman's flag immediately went up for offside.
Replays showed Cristian Romero's leg clearly playing Diaz onside, but the VAR room comprising Darren England and his assistant Dan Cook failed to overturn the linesman's incorrect decision in what was labelled a "significant human error" by the PGMOL.
Audio footage published from the discussion includes England quickly saying "check complete" once the 2D line is drawn on Romero's foot, visibly showing Diaz behind the last Tottenham defender, having erroneously thought that the on-field decision was onside.
© Reuters
Speaking to ex-Liverpool striker Michael Owen on Sky Sports News' refereeing segment Mic'd Up, Webb affirmed that the officials want to be a "positive influence" on the sport and ensured that steps would be taken to prevent such a farcical mistake from happening again.
"We are all disappointed that the VAR system didn't step in to rectify a clear error that we had seen on the field with the disallowing of the goal. Nobody is more disappointed than the officials themselves," Webb said.
"They take pride in their work, they want to be a positive influence on the game. In this situation that wasn't the case. Of course, without VAR that disallowed goal would still have been a disallowed goal but VAR exists to step in when we make a wrong decision on the field.
"So, of course, we are disappointed and our job then was to try and find out what happened and what we could do to prevent that sort of thing from happening in the future."
England was not alerted to his error until Tottenham had resumed the game from a free kick inside their own half, and he burst out an expletive as the replay operator informed him that the linesman had raised his flag on the field.
© Reuters
While calls to delay the game are heard, England stated that he "cannot do anything" due to the fact that play had restarted, and Webb revealed that laws set by FIFA and the IFAB (International Football Association Board) prevented such an occurrence, although he also revealed that a "tweak" could occur in the wake of the Diaz incident.
"The VAR and the AVAR asked themselves that question too when the penny dropped as to what had happened, I think 20 seconds had passed. At that point they considered whether they could intervene to stop the game but they recognised that the laws of the game, set by FIFA and the IFAB, doesn't allow that," Webb added.
"There's obviously a process in place that sits in the laws of the game about how we use VAR to make sure it is delivered consistently throughout every league in the world. And it doesn't allow you to go back in those circumstances. As such they decided not to intervene.
"I know that IFAB are, in fact before this incident even happened, I knew that they were going to do a full review of the laws of the game relating to the use of VAR. They put a protocol in place and it has served the game really well. But now we have lived experience of situations like we saw this week.
"We can feed into that as well and IFAB will look into whether there is a need to tweak some of it. I am sure they will be looking into how this aspect of VAR is used as well."
Following confirmation of the officials' error, Liverpool boss Klopp claimed that replaying the match would be the right thing to do, but that unprecedented scenario is not expected to materialise.
Ben Knapton
