PGMOL chief reveals how referees will avoid Luis Diaz blunder in the future
PGMOL chief refereeing officer Howard Webb has outlined the steps Premier League referees have taken to avoid a blunder similar to Luis Diaz's disallowed goal at Tottenham in the future.
Diaz's clearly-onside effort in north London was chalked off due to a VAR blunder. Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp called for a replay while his club questioned the "sporting integrity" of the 2-1 defeat due to the mishap.
PGMOL said the failure to award the goal was down to "significant human error" and the released audio confirmed an embarrassing communication breakdown between on-field referee Simon Hooper, VAR Darren England and AVAR Dan Cook.
The game was goalless at the time of Diaz's goal. Curtis Jones had earlier been sent off before Son Heung-min and Cody Gakpo struck before half-time. Diogo Jota was then dismissed for two bookable offences in the second half as Joel Matip scored an own goal to seal the win for Spurs.
Webb spoke about incident on Match Officials: Mic'd Up and claimed alterations have been made to the VAR process to ensure a similar debacle does not ruin games in the future.
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He said: "We took the unusual step of releasing the audio from this situation not long after it happened. We wanted to show everybody what was very quickly apparent to us that it was a significant human error and loss of concentration. We're all disappointed the VAR system didn't step in to rectify the clear error we'd seen on the field with the disallowing of the goal.
"Nobody is more disappointed than the officials themselves. They take pride in their work, they want to be a positive influence on the game, but in this situation it 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're disappointed. Our job then was to try to find out what happened and what we can do to prevent that sort of thing happening again in the future."
Going over the incident, Webb added: "You hear at the start of the clip, Darren England the VAR saying, 'checking offside'. You can hear Darren is going through the process pretty quickly. We sometimes gets criticism for being a bit slow sometimes. We do focus on efficiency but never at the sacrifice of accuracy. You can hear Darren is trying to be quick. He puts a line across on [Cristian] Romero and that shows a very clear picture and I think at that point Darren loses sight of what the on-field decision was, sees the clear picture with Diaz in an onside picture, and quickly 'check completes it'. He communicates 'check complete' to the on-field referee Simon Hooper, Simon hears, assumes the 'check complete' is for the offside goal, and the game restarts.
"One of the things that has been brought into sharp focus is the need to reiterate some of those communication protocols that are really valuable in VAR, to prevent this type of thing happening. We want the on-field referee to communicate to the VAR what the on-field decision is very clearly and VAR to go back to referee and acknowledge they have heard that properly. The VAR goes through the process of checking the situation and giving clear direction to the replay operator to get the right angles, speaking to the assistant VAR as they are going through that as well so that the assistant VAR can be another check and balance.
"Before communicating to the field, speaking to the AVAR what their intended direction of Travel is going to be, and not just saying 'check complete' - because what are you check completing? Say 'check complete, goal confirmed'. In this case, 'check complete, offside confirmed'. That is then another trigger to the on-field officials that they are going in the wrong direction. We have put a lot of steps in place to ensure the error we saw in that important Game doesn't happen again."
In the same show, Webb confessed Manchester City midfielder Mateo Kovacic was fortunate not to be sent off during their 1-0 defeat at Arsenal on Sunday.
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