The Liverpool skipper believed he had drawn his side level in the first half at the Etihad, but VAR intervened and ruled the goal out for “offside”. ..Continue Reading
Liverpool had already fallen behind earlier in the half after Erling Haaland opened the scoring. His header followed a missed penalty, which was saved by Giorgi Mamardashvili.
Van Dijk thought he had restored parity before the break with a powerful header from a corner. But the celebrations were short-lived as VAR determined that Andy Robertson, positioned “offside”, was “interfering with play”.
City capitalized on the momentum. Goals from Nico Gonzalez and Jeremy Doku on either side of the interval sealed a 3-0 victory for Pep Guardiola’s men, delivering another setback to Liverpool’s title defense.
The call to disallow Van Dijk’s effort has sparked debate among analysts. Now, PGMOL chief Howard Webb has weighed in.
Speaking on TNT’s Referee’s Mic’d Up, Webb explained to former Liverpool striker Michael Owen: “For sure Michael, a huge decision in a big game.
“As the ball moves towards Robertson – three yards out from goal in the middle of the six-yard box – he makes that clear action to duck below the ball. It goes just over his head and finds the goal in the half of the six-yard box where he is.
“The officials have to make a judgement, did that clear action impact on the goalkeeper and his ability to save the ball? That’s where the subjectivity comes into play.
They looked at that action so close to the goalkeeper and formed that opinion.
“I know that’s not a view held by everybody but it’s not unreasonable to understand why [the officials] would form that conclusion when the player is so close to the goalkeeper, the ball is coming right towards him and he has to duck to get out of the way.
“They form the conclusion that it impacts Donnarumma’s ability to dive towards the ball and make the save.
“Once they’ve made that on-field decision, the job of the VAR is to look at that and decide was the outcome clearly and obviously wrong.
“Only Donnarumma truly knows if he was impacted by this and we have to look at the factual evidence.”
After the match, Liverpool boss Arne Slot gave his assessment of the situation in an interview with Sky Sports. “I think it’s obvious and clear that the wrong decision has been made, at least in my opinion,” he said.
“Because he [Robertson] didn’t interfere at all with what the goalkeeper could do. That could have influenced the game in a positive way for us because in the first half we were so poor.”
Leave a Reply