In response to the Liverpool VAR blunder at Tottenham, Howard Webb speaks out.

Luis Diaz’s goal for Liverpool in their 2-1 Premier League loss against Tottenham Hotspur has been discussed by Howard Webb on the Match Officials: Mic’d Up program.

For the first time, Howard Webb has addressed the absurd VAR ruling that disallowed Luis Diaz’s onside goal in Liverpool’s 2-1 Premier League loss to Tottenham Hotspur.

 

For the second episode of the Match Officials: Mic’d Up broadcast on Sky Sports and TNT Sports, the incident at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on September 30 was the main talking topic, and PGMOL chief Webb was joined by former Liverpool striker Michael Owen.

When Luis Diaz put the ball in the goal, the score was 0-0. But the on-field referees wrongly disallowed the goal, and Stockley Park’s VAR staff did nothing to correct their oversight.

 

After the game, the PGMOL issued a statement acknowledging that the goal should have stood and that a “significant human error” had occurred. Before the recording of the event was made public, Liverpool—who lost the game 2-1 and had Curtis Jones and Diogo Jota sent off—released an inflammatory statement of their own.

 

Webb recently shared his opinion on match officials: In the Mic. “We took the unusual step of releasing the audio from this situation not long after it happened,” Webb stated after the audience heard the recording. We intended to demonstrate to everyone what became immediately clear to us: that there had been a substantial human error and lapse in focus. We’re all dissatisfied that the VAR system didn’t intervene to correct the obvious mistake we had seen on the pitch with the goal’s disallowance.

 

The officials themselves are the ones who are the most dissatisfied. They take pride in their job and aspire to have a positive impact on the game, but that wasn’t the case in this instance. That disallowed goal would still have been disallowed even without VAR, but VAR is there to intervene when we make a poor call on the field. Naturally, we are disappointed. Then, it was our responsibility to investigate what had occurred and determine what could be done to stop similar incidents from occurring in the future.