I went on record this week saying I sympathised with Liverpool last Saturday.
Diaz was clearly onside. Technology introduced for these exact scenarios failed to reach the correct decision, simply because those in charge didn’t communicate. The explanation remains baffling.
It’s hard to comprehend that sport worth millions could be decided in 2023 by a couple of people failing to do their job properly.
It doesn’t seem complicated. You get paid a lot of money to watch football, and your only task is to draw a line and tell the ref ‘goal or no goal’.
A lot of people would love that to be their career.
Yet when LFC released a statement asking for the audio to be released to ‘find a solution’ I thought surely, they are not going to ask for the fixture to be replayed?
I’m equally uncomfortable with the notion they are collecting evidence to take to court say if the dropped points cost then a top 4 place.
Yet, there are not many other reasons why they want to listen to the recordings.
Especially when their own manager stresses it was human error – and no kind of agenda or conspiracy.
So, we get to his press conference and there is Jürgen Klopp suggesting that there should be a rematch.
In that moment days of sympathy were extinguished.
The support you had for days evaporated.
Those who stood in your corner, vanished.
Because how you respond to adversity paints a picture. Here is one of the biggest clubs in the world not wanting to fix VAR or make it better, they simply have a convenient loophole to get away with a game where they went down to 9 men, just as critical to their defeat than one isolated moment.
The classy thing to do is accept the numerous apologies and get on with life.
However hard it is to understand the incompetence, no matter the struggle to process how something could be so wrong, at some point you have to accept it and put it in the past.
That’s life, a lot of unfair things happen every day that you can’t alter.
Klopp says this incident was unprecedented. Yet he’s worked long enough in football to know that’s not true, every club will have a story how they have been robbed by a decision later admitted as being wrong.
Klopp would have been a manager when officials called the game by their eyes, zero computers to help them. A simpler time.
When linesmen or women couldn’t spot Roy Carroll clearly dropping the ball over the line when in goal for United. Sir Alex didn’t offer a replay.
I don’t remember anyone at FIFA demanding England get another crack at Germany when cameras proved Lampard’s shot at crossed the line.
Even goal line technology, mostly fitted in seamlessly, failed to give Sheffield United a goal against Villa. Chris Wilder was left having to accept that the device simply wasn’t working that day. Villa stayed up based on that.
Arteta had to accept Brentford’s equaliser at the Emirates only counting because they forgot to draw the lines at Stockley Park. That cost us momentum in the title race.
Everyone would be constantly demanding replays and it would be a mess.
We famously once offered to replay an FA Cup tie with Sheffield United but that was different.
Mr Wenger acknowledged the controversy that day was caused by our mistake and wanted to fix it.
Kanu, new to the country, didn’t know the unofficial rule of giving the ball back to the opponents if they kicked call out for an injury.
So, when Parlour essentially was throwing the ball back for the Blades to have possession, no one understood why Kanu chased the ball and crossed for a confused Overmars to tap in.
Spurs players won’t have the embarrassment our Gunners did that day and nor should they.
Spurs did nothing wrong, everything was out of their control.
The Prem has said zero official request has been made to replay the match and nothing in their rules make that a possibility.
Good!
Dan Smith
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