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It is not hyperbolic. This is not an overreaction. It is not the result of being a prisoner of the moment. It just is: the two decisions that went against Liverpool during Saturday’s Merseyside derby represented the lowest point of the video-assisted refereeing era.
They were, combined, the two worst VAR decisions to date. They decided the match. Period.
There were a lot of positives to take out of the game from Liverpool’s perspective. Aston Villa was not that Long time ago. And yet Jurgen Klopp’s team looked like a totally different team at Goodison Park.
The ball moved Quick, For real, For real Quick. The team created opportunities and defended well, almost as well as a team can defend when players of the caliber of Alisson Becker and Virgil van Dijk have been ripped from the side.
Klopp, all things considered, will be delighted with the mentality of his team. They arrived with the arrogance of champions. They exuded confidence, moving the ball from side to side, and not in long, drawn-out sequences; with movies and touches and drinks. The combination of midfield, Jordan Henderson, Thiago Alcantara and Fabinho, was outstanding in controlling the flow of the game, dictating all with and without the ball.
They started shooting. Annotated. He suffered a risky decision and a great injury. They were beaten back. Annotated. They stuck together again. Then he scored, again, just to have that nullified.
There was a real mental toughness in the performance.
And yet it is still It’s hard to get away from that stinky VAR feeling.
The system is either a joke or it was broken, probably both.
Two.
Two brutally wrong decisions cost Liverpool all three points. The aim of the VAR was to relieve some of the tension on the referees and prevent the referee team from making massive errors. And yet here he failed a great mistake and was the instigator of the other.
According to video official David Coote, he did. not check this challenge for a red card:
Any way you look at it, that is a breach of duty. The top priority for a referee, no, the basic requirement for a referee, is to ensure the safety of the players on the field. The assistant referee elected Ignore Pickford’s two-foot trick on Virgil van Dijk. Instead, he considered the game to be dead because he had declared Van Dijk offside.
And this is where we get to the fault in the system. Obviously, this line of thinking, taken to its logical extreme, would suggest that anything it is fair play after a player is considered offside.
That is obviously nonsense. Endangering an opponent, in whatever form he takes and when that takes place, in the field, in the tunnel, leaving the field, is not a gray area. The referee may give a red card for such an offense whenever he feels that a player has been in danger.
Which brings us to this: If Coote didn’t seek a red card, why was the VAR involved?
By law, the VAR is not supposed to simply decide to mark something as at will as an offside. Check the things that happen before goals. Check violent behavior and cards and penalties. You’re not supposed to look for things like mindless offside.
That means one of two things: the VAR should not have checked at all or the VAR did He checked for a red card (it couldn’t have been a foul) and found Pickford’s challenge okay.
Either result is both incompetent and wrong.
And then there was this beauty:
Ugh. I want to say that?
It’s just infuriating at this point.
The Premier League needs to decide what involvement it wants the VAR to have. There must be a comprehensive reform. There have been tweaks and updates and things like that since its shocking inception.
Yet this still happens over and over again – Liverpool are only the latest team to experience a decisive match decision and snatch points.
Soccer is a business, yes. But it is a business that is based on the enjoyment of a game, a sport. When that enjoyment runs out, business goes bad. And VAR continues to steal from the fans and their players the moments that make you feel alive; that make the emotional investment worthwhile.
This was stolen from Jordan Henderson: a winning goal in the 90th minute in a Merseyside derby at Goodison Park.
It was a moment that was won. A moment that he deserved. And that was taken away from him because the VAR, as it is currently built, is not suitable for its purpose.
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