VAR breakdown in England: Liverpool anger over “serious human error”

The club is “examining the options available,” the Reds said. In the case of the serious VAR mistake, the rules were not applied correctly and this led to a distortion of competition, Liverpool FC argued.

In the game at Tottenham Hotspur, a goal by Liverpool’s Luis Diaz in the 34th minute was wrongly disallowed for offside. The responsible referee association then admitted that this had been a “significant human error”.

The video referee thought that the referee on the pitch had judged Luis Diaz’s goal to be valid and therefore did not intervene. The referees in the stadium saw their actual offside decision confirmed. The scene fueled the debate about video evidence in English football. The affected video referees have been withdrawn from further assignments for the time being.

Classifying the breakdown as a human error was “unacceptable,” emphasized Liverpool FC. There must be an investigation into the events “with full transparency”. This is of great importance for the future decision-making process, which will affect all clubs. “Lessons must be learned to improve processes to ensure that situations like this can never happen again,” the club statement continued.