Dermot Gallagher: One small question about Liverpool’s disallowed goal could have prevented a terrible mistake

Former Premier League referee Dermot Gallagher says match officials were in no position to reverse their decision to disallow Luis Diaz’s wrongly disallowed goal for Liverpool at Tottenham once the match restarted.

The audio that led to Luis Diaz’s goal being wrongly disallowed by VAR has been released publicly by the Professional Game Match Officials Limited.

VAR Darren England and his assistant Daniel Cook failed to overturn the incorrect offside decision on the pitch after Diaz scored at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

PGMOL said in a statement on Tuesday evening that “the standards did not meet expectations” and has identified three key lessons “to limit the risk of a future failure”.

Speaking Air sportssaid former referee Gallagher: “It was a terrible mistake to make. Everyone has acknowledged that, we have all acknowledged that. It is the biggest talking point of the season, let alone this weekend.”

“It’s about the process now and one of the processes they will have to undertake from now on is that the VAR will have to ask the referee: ‘What is the decision on the pitch?’

“If that little question had been asked and (Simon Hooper) had said ‘offside’ then you have a starting point. Then you can move on. Unfortunately, because that question was not asked, they were left with the impression that the goal had been scored. the field and that’s how everything went.”

Should we change the laws of the game?

‘I think it’s easier to get a process that everyone feels comfortable with and can work on.

“It may seem like a trivial question, but that simple question would have illuminated everything that happened next. If I had said to you, ‘What is the decision on the field?’ You’d say it was offside.

“I could then look and say, ‘I’m checking for offside’. He wasn’t checking for offside. What he was checking was whether the player was offside.

“That’s how it unfolded.”

Liverpool said on Sunday they would explore their options given the ‘clear need for escalation and resolution’, and PGMOL provided a detailed report alongside the audio to the Premier League, which it in turn shared with Liverpool and the other 19 top players. Clubs.

PGMOL will emphasize the importance of accuracy over efficiency to its video match officials, while a “new VAR communications protocol will be developed to improve the clarity of communication between the referee and the VAR team regarding on-field decisions”.

But should we hear the fourth official’s audio?

“Right now there are restrictions,” Gallagher continued. “We cannot make everything public. It’s great that they’ve been transparent, come out and owned up to this mistake.

“It was admitted very quickly and everyone now knows what happened.

“While you may not like what happened, at least you can now understand why it happened. They understood why that mistake was made.

“That’s good, because once you understand why a mistake was made, you can mitigate that event.

“The learning point is that this should never happen again.”

But once they realized a mistake had been made, did they make the right decision by not stopping the game?

“Unfortunately he can’t do that,” Gallagher added. “Once you decide what decision you are going to make and the game starts again, there is no going back. You have to keep going.

“Darren England realizes that. He cannot go back, because those are the rules of the game. The referees must adhere to them.”

“We are the worst bodies in the world when we beat ourselves up. Speaking for myself, if I come off the field and I’m told I’ve made a mistake and I’m driving home, it actually shortens my life.

“I want to go home, go to sleep and wash it away. I want to get my next match under my belt because I want to wash it away.

“These guys will absolutely beat themselves up and this is the time when their colleagues need to support them. They need to shield their colleagues to make sure they are protected and get back on the field.”

Analysis: Why were the officials in such a hurry?

Sky Sports News chief reporter Kaveh Solhekol:

“Pep Guardiola said earlier today that he thought referees were too much in the foreground and people talked about them too much.

“I’m not sure referees want to be in the spotlight. They just want to do their job and they know that if we don’t talk about the referees it means they’ve done a good job.

“But with all the technology out there now, they’re coming under more and more scrutiny. When I listen to the audio I keep wondering why they were in such a hurry to make that decision.

“They are being pressured to make these decisions very quickly. When VAR was first introduced, and it took a long time for them to make these decisions, everyone complained that it took too long.

“People in the stadiums don’t know what was going on either, so I think that’s why they tried to speed up the decision-making process.

“But when you listen to the audio, it’s clear that if you do something at that speed, and there are that many people watching and depending on your decision-making, mistakes are going to be made.

“I think it’s important what it says at the end of the clip, which is that the protocols are going to change. Lessons will be learned.

“I know a lot of people have hammered the referees, but we have to make it clear that Liverpool as a club have not hammered the referees. They don’t want the match to be replayed.”

“They don’t blame Darren England, they don’t blame PGMOL. What they have asked for is that the process and protocols are improved so that mistakes like this don’t happen again.”