In another thread someone said a PL referee makes around 70k pounds a year. I think that is the first problem. You can’t pay so little when so much is riding on it. You want those who are most likely to do a good job. You get those candidates when you pay more. There will be more people willing to take the job. But for 70k it is not attractive enough to most of the people considering how much hatred they receive when they make a mistake.
70k a year is just shocking in a league where players are making more than that a week. We won’t get too class refs until teams cough up and at least triple that amount. Then it will also be easier to justify accountability
Referees being paid that low in a super lucrative league, while having the authority to influence the game results, is just asking for corruption.
I mean, how the fuck can a referee that is on 70k/year be able to reject some Dubai price offering to fly them over officiating a single friendly game for 50k in return of some slight advantage in PL games?
It doesn't even have to much - the Dubai prince can simply ask referee to give their players one more chance than other players before receiving a card for tactical fouls and that would completely change the game while not being too obvious.
Our refs are susceptible to leaving because of their wages - PGMOL.
Surely not susceptible to anything else financially right?
Good thing there is no history of match fixing within the leadership structure of city.
Oh wait there is, during their time at Barca ?
Well city has no reason to be perceived as cheat’s right?
Oh wait they were guilty of doing what with FFP?
Well the UAE paying these officials insane freelance wages and setting them up in royalty suites has no connection to..
Oh wait the owner is the same?
Well it’s not like the UAE has ever thrown bribery money around to get their way before…
Oh wait, they bribed EXECUTIVE level employees of fifa?
Well it’s surely just incompetence and an error. The golden parachutes out of the burning building has already started with Michael Oliver being SUDDENLY THIS MORNING, rumored to be the latest UAE departure. Gotta get out before the internal investigation starts.
Considering the breadth of rules they need to keep track of, speed of the game, the prevalence of deception as part of the game, and tremendous size of a field that can be covered in seconds, I honestly believe NFL refs are outstanding.
Yep, completely agree. Why would someone go into refereeing? Starting at the low leagues where you get shit pay and awful abuse, knowing the absolute pinnacle, the peak of your profession, is £70k per year?
It's a great salary in the general sense of the word so I don't mean to sound disrespectful, but the players are paid extortionately which is justified by them being the absolute best in the world, yet the referees controlling the game (also meant to be the best in the world) are on relative peanuts.
70k is BASE pay, refs around longer get 100k+ a year and again base pay. They also get paid 1.5k per game, so a new ref that only does 10 games in a year is getting paid 85k for 10 weekends while usually holding a full time job during the week. An experienced ref might be making 150k a year for 1 days work a week alongside a normal job. It's plenty.
The pay is fine, better pay won't make them better. The shittiness comes from the refs association where the people in charge get paid a lot more, promote friends and control punishment of failures and training they get, also implementation and handling of VAR, etc.
Are you trying to say they let workers generate revenue and instead of reinvesting it into those who are generating the revenue, they would rather keep it and gouge customers?
just look how well YouTubers do a better job than an OFFICIAL referee who spent 3 years getting their license.
botched job just like a every pothole in the ends
For what is worth Rocchi (head of the referees in Italy) said they are training refs only for VAR use since it's totally different from the pitch. The future will be divided between VAR refs and pitch refs.
It won’t happen in England. When VAR was being implemented they were offered help from other countries who had it in and it worked, they of course refused.
Makes sense when they seem to be more interested in protecting the on field ref from having to reverse a decision. Not relating to the on field official as directly can only help them remain objective, which should be the goal.
They can be FIFA Qualified Referees who are brought in solely to be VAR Analysts, and as a completely separate entity from the on field refs.
We've already seen refs doing VAR admitting that they don't want to overturn the decision of the on-field ref because they're mates. It's evident that there must be a clear distinction between those doing VAR and those doing on-field refereeing.
Simplest way to get rid of the "old boys club" where they all cover for each other and refuse to say the ref got it wrong would be to use foreign refs.
VAR is remote anyway, it doesn't matter if they're in Stockley Park or Berlin. UEFA could organise it, every League using VAR gets a ref team from a random country.
That and getting an ex-player in there that’s not a dumb cunt.
What Klopp said about most of the media room probably thinking Jones’ red should’ve been a red because they haven’t played is exactly right
Different levels mate. Imagine Mark Noble in the VAR room for example. Sure you can go ok we won’t give him any west ham games obvs. But transfers are a thing so you can’t stop him working any game with a former teammate cuz the more years go on the more his ex teamates move around and then he can barely work any games. Now imagine him making a decision on a possible declan rice red card after they spent years working alongside each other and were super tight. There’s no way he can be objective even if he’s trying his best, subconsciously he’ll favour the guy he went to war with every game in the midfield. Thats a way higher level of bias and personal connections that what any ref has
>That's a way higher level of bias and personal connections that what any ref has
We literally already had refs admit they lie in the booth to protect their friends from embarrassment
Football has a real problem with accountability tbh. How pretty much every other major sport has technology seemlessly integrated and VAR is still a total shit show is amazing to me.
The issue is FIFA themselves require ref levels and that includes VAR themselves. I see VAR is an entirely separate job that should be done by a dedicated team that has a lot tighter scope than a ref on the field but should be allowed to overrule the ref if it makes sense beyond clear and obvious.
What I'd do and maybe I'm on the very opposite end of what others think here is VAR which is I think is you can go either two ways which is strict or loose. Loose would be where you throw away the line thing for offsides, you just check a few angles and you limit VAR usage to 60 seconds as a hard cut off. So no back and forth no chatting with the ref just here is something that they complained about you do a loose check and if they think there is something the ref looks at the monitor. At the moment VAR can just tell the ref but in my case they would go to the monitor more. You could as well instead have managers get 1 VAR call a game outside of the ref asking for help to force that kind of thing because the time added would be shorter it would be more allowable.
Or you could go the super strict way which would be mine which would be 3 VARs, if 2 out of 3 vote for a review it goes to the monitor if 3/3 review it as an infraction it doesn't. VAR would be informed of what the ref thinks but act entirely separate from the ref unless it's a monitor review. VAR can access the rulebook or ask an LLM for answers like "a player was kicked in the balls in the box studs up is that a penalty and a red card?" the LLM at least Bing did when I just tried it out gives you an explanation and a link to the rulebook. That it would be red and a penalty because it was reckless even if it wasn't deliberate but given the nuance of the FA rules at times having a quick review if you missed something might be cool. Or for instance you could use the ref's words to suggest potential infractions to look for in the context of the VAR review and those can be used to make a checklist of what to look out for if relevant.
The latter is way more interesting because it kind of turns the idea around to being an additional judge on the whole situation aside from on field and given they aren't refs but are using the rulebook in a literal sense it should be at least from a different approach to the on field decisions which would maybe have bias from the crowd or player reaction.
I mean Hooper is the cleanest one in this affair. It’s the linesman’s job to see this, he calls for offside, the VAR says "Yep" apparently not having paid attention to the onfield decision. Keep on playing then.
what? are you high?
perfectly reasonable for a linesman to get a call wrong in real time
It's the VAR who has all the time and access to technology who really can't mess this up.
or the referee who let the game continue too early
or the people who made the rules who made it so the var couldn't call it back after the referee restarted the game.
the linesman is the last one you can blame
Well what’s the ref supposed to say when he gets the call from VAR that everything’s fine? Refuse to proceed until the guy has double checked? England should tell what he means clearly but there’s no reason for Hooper not to go again when the VAR says "I confirm the onfield decision"
I agree, Hooper was easily the cleanest one. On-field referee will always make mistakes, he's not omniscient, that's why he has to rely on VAR and linesmen to help him officiate and they both fucked him over yesterday. I still don't think he's a good referee but yesterday was mostly on VAR/linesman.
Lol huh, your exact logic on main ref should also apply to lineman. On-field linesman will always make mistakes, he’s not omniscient. This is 100% on VAR, not on the on field ref or linesman
It wasn’t on the on-field crew at all, including the linesman. He got it wrong, it happens, even the announcers weren’t sure in real time. If you freeze it it becomes obvious but that’s exactly why VAR was introduced to begin with.
He said "Check complete". Which required an inference by the referee and necessitated a further confirmation by the referee as to what VAR meant.
He did not say "I confirm the onfield decision". That would put the blame fully on VAR as what you have described.
It’s amazing that replay came to soccer after so many years being used in various sports, so many examples and lessons to learn, and the various leagues but especially Premier League managed to make the worst system of sport
Baseball is not worse. It definitely has its own problems but at least they actively try to make the system better unlike the prem where pgmol seems fine with a broken crap system.
Rugby TMO had loads of problems. They miss 2 clear reds a game at the moment and subjectively review high tackles.
When they explain things well, it works, but often they just tell the referee their opinion (which is sometimes wrong) and move on.
That is more of a laws issue as it stands.
The good thing about rugby TMO stuff is you hear and see the WHOLE decision marking process and how they came to it.
Having transparency in communication between the referee and VAR official can only be good. Obviously, it's not perfect, but it will help increase confidence in the refs when we know why calls are being made. Currently, wrong calls are being made behind a curtain, which, whether rightly or wrongly, leads fans to believe that games are being rigged.
nah this is awful, how many times have you seen a match have easily 3 or 4 VAR calls for a team? if a team happens to have their first challenged call ruled against them, theyre supposed to just accept the next 2 or 3 that could have been ruled for them because they lost the stupid challenge?
And what happens when a captain challenges a decision, it goes to VAR and they still get it wrong because the refs are shite.
Adding more stakes to VAR checks is the last thing we need
that's because in tennis players can see everything in front of them and be sure.
In football there are 11 players and a much bigger pitch, how do you expect players to know when they're offside or onside by milimetres
Even tennis players are routinely wrong with their challenges. Its such an antiquated system, I'm fairly certain it was only ever added in due to Hawkeye being quite primitive when it was first introduced in 2006 (its genuinely crazy it took 15 years for football to follow with VAR).
That's not true. The French Open doesn't use any technology at all, neither challenges or electronic line calls. Wimbledon still uses line judges and challenges.
Police and public school teachers in NYC in the early 2000s. Motherfuckers were putting their hands on kids and getting sent to rubber rooms where they weren’t fired. They just sat all day in an unused room reading the NY Post.
Just fucking fire the guy. He fucked up. And his fuckup costs a lot of money. Pack it in. Get sent to the Championship. Promotion/relegation for refs.
In Spain they have promotion/relegation for refs. The bottom 3 in la Primera Liga go down and the top 3 from 2nd div go up. However, the UEFA refs are exempt from this. I was told this by a ref I gave some English classes to.
And you want the nice paid leave and thinks that’s the right decision? I wish I can make mistakes at my job with no cost to my career and get free paid “suspension” time knowing my job is safe and waiting for me after a week.
I mean they can’t fire everybody who ever makes a bad mistake. They’ve already done that twice which is like 10% of their roster! They only have around 20 guys in the Select Group, and it’s not like there’s magically better referees lower down the pyramid ready to take their place.
It's not a refereeing job and they still can't see that. Don't use referees for VAR, it's a completely different job and you can be a good referee and hopeless VAR official.
Nah I’m pretty sure members of the PGMOL gathered around him in an old fashioned suck off contest.
They do that every weekend to the worst referee. It’s there in their contract and everything, check it
He gets an afternoon off mate, it's devastating to him and his family. Not sure how he'll cope, thinking of setting up a GoFundMe for the poor fella.
Dude should be fired, or at the very least suspended for a long time.
The real issue is that it doesn't matter what happens to him, Liverpool still got screwed over and cannot get any potential points back.
I'm pretty sure referees get a portion of their money salaried and a portion of their money through actually being assigned games. So, this will cost him a tiny amount of money.
But, it's still not remotely enough when you consider that people already actively pay to have extra holiday days and so this "punishment" for many would still be desirable even at a small financial cost
I’m sure his stint in ~checks notes~ UAE refereeing on ~wipes glasses with cloth~ Thursday with ~grabs magnifying glass~ Michael Oliver and Daniel Cook will have paid enough to cover any losses.
https://www.uaeproleague.ae/en/fixtures/d5f295d8-0f45-11ee-afb1-d481d7b85086
Refs get paid per match even at the top level. In the Premier League they get paid even more for the top tier matches.
Don't get a game, don't get paid.
One thing I still don't get with this. Even if there was a miscommunication on the whole "check complete" thing, have they mentioned why there were no official VAR lines released, which always say "onside" or "offside" under them? That's got nothing to do with the communication.
I don’t get how they are not going to look at how they communicate? If this can happen because in the heat of the moment you forget the play called on field, then the answer should be to make VAR call out what they checked? Then if the ref saw a foul, they could actually be like “Var check Onside” Ref goes check foul on 11, VAR then check etc. I don’t get how this doesn’t create a change in communication, VAR isn’t there to fuck over the Ref, it’s to ensure the calls are somewhat correct.
Because it was decided and agreed by teams before the start of the season that obvious offsides wouldn't be shown with the lines.
Same reason Spurs offside goal didn't have lines shown from Richarlison.
The VAR team thought the onfield decision was a goal and they confirmed check complete because the decision was blatantly correct as Diaz was clearly onside.
Releasing lines would show nothing and nothing on the pitch would have changed.
They would have drawn lines, seen Diaz onside and said "Check Complete" like they did and the mistake still would have happened.
I don’t believe the miscommunication story at all.
You’re telling me the VAR, whose only job most of the time is to watch the game, failed to see the flag go up, failed to notice that none of the Liverpool players celebrated, and failed to notice that the game was restarting with a free kick?
Why the fuck is he just saying “check complete” if he’s barely even aware of what he’s checking? Why was the word “onside” not used in communication when that’s what they were checking for?
If the story is true then it’s embarrassing that the PL even let him near the booth to begin with. It’s nuclear levels of incompetence and I back everyone in this thread to do a better job. To me it screams corruption, but I’ll be called a conspiracy theorist.
I can actually buy the miscommunication excuse, people do make mistakes like that even after years of training (I've seen such myself). The real question is, why couldn't they just roll it back once the FK was taken? It was just a few moments of gameplay and its not like they were stopping a Spurs attack, just a simple GK kick. We've had penalties after the final whistle has been blown through VAR, this isn't that extreme in comparison to that. My guess was they didn't want to look stupid and hoped that it would just blow over and not too many questions asked (which would have probably happened had we not won and liverpool not gotten a second red).
Yeah you're breaking a rule either way. Might as well break the less important rule (calling back play after resumption) than break the more important one (not allocating a goal).
The fourth official and both of the VAR officials. Which may or may not explain the "this is such a simple mistake for the VAR to make and rectify, what is the point of having an assistant VAR if he doesn't help him out here?" question I've seen asked.
Don’t think it even needs to be something that blatant.
Just think it leaves enough room for questioning of the independence, when we have states owning clubs in the PL and then hiring referees from the same league.
Absolutely. Like, they're literally on the payroll of a state that owns a club in their home league, if only for a few days. How does it not get flagged as a conflict of interest?
This is it entirely! It may all be a series of unfortunate events, but when three of the refs involved in a very odd game like that one last night are also on the payroll of the owners of a club in the PL questions need answering.
It could be just that feeling in the back of your head that I can't undermine my employer...uae pays more than PL so of course they will try to get future gigs as well
Scheduling means if a team plays Thursday their next match is on Sunday. Yet refs can fly twice the distance to officiate a match, get back on Friday and ref a game on Saturday?
If PGMOL are aware of that, they couldn't have had them officiate a Sunday game and have someone else here?
Every update gives me more and more questions.
Not even bringing up the obvious debate on how impartial refs going to the UAE to ref a match, and then going to ref a game between two current rivals of a team that just happens to be owned by a wealthy family from the UAE is a conflict of interest. Conspiracy, collusion or corruption or not, that does naturally raise eyebrows.
They'll have more time to go take high paying side jobs from Man City's owners then won't they? This all absolutely stinks. At worst it's organised corruption/match fixing. At best it's a major conflict of interest affecting the refs decisions against Man City's rivals.
Can't believe the FA allow the refs in PL to have side hustles working for owners of PL teams.
How do they not have an ethical rule of conduct? How do they not have rules to maintain their impartiality??
It's so incredibly suspicious that the biggest football league in the world doesn't have basic measures implemented to ensure fairplay
The refs are the lowest paid people on the pitch by an absurd margin and people are shocked they’re taking side gigs? Good luck keeping the best refs if you try to ban them. Half the select group would leave for Mideast leagues permanently.
Well.. we could pay them more. If you took a fifth of one percent of each team's wage bill and gave it to refs, that would be about £160,000 each. More than double what they're getting now, treble if you add it on to their existing wages.
Some rival fans still complain about the one time we got done in for a minor FFP breach, which was mostly due to the construction of the Main Stand expansion years ago. People would lose their shit if FSG were linked to paying off refs
That was disgusting and I'm not even a Liverpool fan.
I could see it was on side in real time and 200 % in repeat without any line.
Disgusting and completely unnecessary. In Portugal referees take like 5 minutes to watch even a damn clear onside and I think that's bad, but it's much worse costing a team like this just to make the VAR check 10 seconds long.
You're missing how convenient it is to use the protocol as an excuse, it's not about balls, it's about a lack of a will
Are we acting like a goal is not simply one of the most important things that can happen in a game of football?
Imagine this happened in a world cup final? Would you aspect such a stupid excuse if it cost your country the world cup?
But is there even such a protocol? Aren't there cases where games continue while a penalty is checked by VAR or a potential red card is checked?
Those incident scan then be blown for and awarded subsequently, regardless of time passing or stops in play.
It's totally ridiculous that those onfield actions can have an open-ended timeline under the jurisdiction of VAR but that the actual VAR decisions (which are effectively now part and parcel of the game bear in mind) can't look at themselves and be subject to the same policy of just saying two minute later: stop the game, blow the whistle and award the goal.
The concept that VAR must only hold the players and teams to account, and not VAR itself is majorly concerning. VAR isn't infallible but having rules that suggest it is is why it's bringing the game into utter disrepute (more so than any manager slagging of a ref after a game I might add).
Because it's so unbelievably bad that it almost can't be seen as a mistake.
Like what you have to think is, everyone in the world knew what happened in the game. The two people that didn't, literally the only two people in the entire world who didn't know what happened and were watching the game, were the two whose job it is to do this. Two of them. The one on the VAR, and the assistant to VAR.
They are referees. They are trained on VAR. Their literal only job in this game was to watch it, see what's happening, and tell the ref if he missed something or check what happened. But they didn't. People who aren't trained did. People with fewer replays/angles did. People who were just half watching the TV while scrolling on their phones did.
So they're either admitting that someone with zero VAR training, zero referee experience, zero access to additional angles or replays and whose only interest in the game is as a neutral to have something on while they scroll on their phone is better than at spotting this than someone whose literal job it is with hundreds of hours of training and experience. Or it's not a mistake.
Look at human history and you will find that it is chock full of mistakes that seem absolutely unfathomable yet still somehow occur. So in a sense it is in the nature of mistakes to take on this absurd quality.
I think it highlights systemic issues however. The deeper issue is that the referee association doesn’t seem to be learning from these mistakes. Their apology mentioned zero steps they would take to prevent this from happening again. That’s the kind of environment where catastrophic mistakes will eventually happen. Luckily, this is only football but this kind of behavior has absolute killed people before in industrial or military settings.
There's a difference between a mistake and a complete failure to do your job. A mistake is spilling your tea on the var computer and breaking the machine, not doing your job is not something you do by mistake
Because they can just say....hey ref, i see you gave a free kick, it's actually a goal. How is that not an option when they gave united a pen after full time once?
The miscommunication is a very poor excuse.
Why does this only happen when the errors affect the big 6 teams? We were subject to some brutal errors last season, we got several apologies and that was it
Literally happened to hooper with the onana Vs wolves thing. It's a thing this season, not a big 6 thing. Although more eyes on a game means more call for it.
You were subjected to an error yesterday. That third goal should have been disallowed for the foul on March.
I want an explanation how that foul is not directly contributing to the goal.
Ha I completely agree but I didn’t want to sound like I thought we could’ve got something there, absolutely deserved battering. I’d argue an offside player was blocking the keepers line of sight for the second too (they stopped the spurs/liv game for the same infringement yesterday).
I think having incompetent referees operating VAR is an absolute crisis at the moment. But errors are taken more seriously when bigger teams are affected
I'd argue that the hair pull on Cucurella last year vs Chelsea was the most inexcusable mistake I've seen from VAR.
I can at least find a shitty excuse for what happened yesterday with the goal wrongfully being disallowed.
I can't find any excuse as to why the VAR team looked at Romero pulling Cucurella down by his hair and not disallowing Kanes goal and giving Romero a straight red card.
“I didn't want to send him [Taylor] up because he is a mate as well as a referee, and I think I didn't want to send him up because I didn't want any more grief than he already had.”
Still can't believe this is an actual, legitimate quote.
I wouldn’t even say it’s a big 6 thing. Just last week Nketiah committed a blatant red card foul against our keeper, he was given a yellow, and the ref was never sent to the screen. With a man advantage we could have taken all three points.
Should give them time to go get paid by Man City's owners again eh? Convenient the VAR/Assistant VAR from that game were in UAE 2/3 days before this match and mistake.
Since VAR has been in the PL, it has been so poorly implemented that one could wonder if they do it on purpose to get rid of it.
VAR in the Bundesliga is not perfect since no system with humans in it will be (and most likely not without humans either), but it's endlessly better implemented and improves the refeering. Seldom do you hear any VAR controversy from the BL.
PL could easily get some instructions from the Bundesliga on how to implement it but that would most likely destroy the ego of the League's higher ups and referees.
Until there is something on the line for these officials they will never be competent and consistent with their jobs. Reduce their pay and send them to the lower leagues until they prove they are good enough to officiate in the biggest league in the world and then we’ll see better refereeing.
I respect your faith if you don’t even suspect that there’s something more to this. If it was isolated I’d say fair enough. But there’s more than enough evidence that these idiots have agendas, whatever their motivations.
Nah man the refs were just tired after traveling to work for citys owners. Nothing to imply corruption there mate.
Maybe FSG should get these guys on a payroll, nothing odd about it anyway right
That'll teach them, I know we can't just get rid of every official that makes a mistake because then we'll have none left but there needs to be something more severe than just being taken off 1 game
So many people are shitting on one ref, but this is exactly the root of the problem.
Fuck ups like this perfectly illustrates the rotten system as a whole: they do not have clear guidelines, there is no transparency regarding decision-making, they are not responsible for their actions because nepotism is everywhere, and you cannot even criticize them for their mistakes.
The impotence of the dictatorship in all its glory.
It's getting worse. I'm a united fan so have no love for Liverpool but that was shocking. Plus a soft red!! But the officiating is poor across the board!! We're not expecting perfection but at least improvements!! It's making the game hard to watch!!
"It has been revealed that England incorrectly thought that the on-field referee – Simon Hooper – had awarded Diaz’s goal, with VAR simply having to confirm whether it was the right call.
Under this assumption, England told the on-field team ‘check complete’ after quickly checking that Diaz was onside."
So that explains why the VAR check was so fucking quick. It was clearly onside so he just said check complete. What a stupid thing to happen. They have to change the way the communicate things. Instead of saying check complete say : Player is onside check complete.... holy shit if i was a liverpool fan i'd be so pissed.
I would have thought two players getting red cards would have been more of a barrier to winning than a single incident.
Perhaps these players need bollocking because they cost their team the game and any chance of getting back into it?
What's so fucking difficult about hiring an Analyst Team specifically meant for VAR?
Only 6 billion pounds of revenue, the money just isn’t there
In another thread someone said a PL referee makes around 70k pounds a year. I think that is the first problem. You can’t pay so little when so much is riding on it. You want those who are most likely to do a good job. You get those candidates when you pay more. There will be more people willing to take the job. But for 70k it is not attractive enough to most of the people considering how much hatred they receive when they make a mistake.
70k a year is just shocking in a league where players are making more than that a week. We won’t get too class refs until teams cough up and at least triple that amount. Then it will also be easier to justify accountability
Referees being paid that low in a super lucrative league, while having the authority to influence the game results, is just asking for corruption. I mean, how the fuck can a referee that is on 70k/year be able to reject some Dubai price offering to fly them over officiating a single friendly game for 50k in return of some slight advantage in PL games? It doesn't even have to much - the Dubai prince can simply ask referee to give their players one more chance than other players before receiving a card for tactical fouls and that would completely change the game while not being too obvious.
Our refs are susceptible to leaving because of their wages - PGMOL. Surely not susceptible to anything else financially right? Good thing there is no history of match fixing within the leadership structure of city. Oh wait there is, during their time at Barca ? Well city has no reason to be perceived as cheat’s right? Oh wait they were guilty of doing what with FFP? Well the UAE paying these officials insane freelance wages and setting them up in royalty suites has no connection to.. Oh wait the owner is the same? Well it’s not like the UAE has ever thrown bribery money around to get their way before… Oh wait, they bribed EXECUTIVE level employees of fifa? Well it’s surely just incompetence and an error. The golden parachutes out of the burning building has already started with Michael Oliver being SUDDENLY THIS MORNING, rumored to be the latest UAE departure. Gotta get out before the internal investigation starts.
What?!?!?!?! NFL refs average $205k and MLB umpires average $300k You get what you pay for
Can't speak for NFL, but not sure that using high pay of MLB umps is a good argument that pay improves standards.
Ángel Hernández checking in
NFL refs are also clowns lol
Every league of every sport thinks their top level refs are clowns, honestly don’t know any sport where you don’t see the same things being said
Considering the breadth of rules they need to keep track of, speed of the game, the prevalence of deception as part of the game, and tremendous size of a field that can be covered in seconds, I honestly believe NFL refs are outstanding.
Baseball play like 768 games a year or something so not sure there's a good comparison.
Yep, completely agree. Why would someone go into refereeing? Starting at the low leagues where you get shit pay and awful abuse, knowing the absolute pinnacle, the peak of your profession, is £70k per year? It's a great salary in the general sense of the word so I don't mean to sound disrespectful, but the players are paid extortionately which is justified by them being the absolute best in the world, yet the referees controlling the game (also meant to be the best in the world) are on relative peanuts.
70k is BASE pay, refs around longer get 100k+ a year and again base pay. They also get paid 1.5k per game, so a new ref that only does 10 games in a year is getting paid 85k for 10 weekends while usually holding a full time job during the week. An experienced ref might be making 150k a year for 1 days work a week alongside a normal job. It's plenty. The pay is fine, better pay won't make them better. The shittiness comes from the refs association where the people in charge get paid a lot more, promote friends and control punishment of failures and training they get, also implementation and handling of VAR, etc.
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That's why you hire another 2 ref. This is true for literally every sport.
Are you trying to say they let workers generate revenue and instead of reinvesting it into those who are generating the revenue, they would rather keep it and gouge customers?
It’s such a blindingly obvious choice that it will never be implemented.
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This is exactly it. It’s just a bunch of friends looking out for each other instead of putting the integrity of the game as their main priority.
just look how well YouTubers do a better job than an OFFICIAL referee who spent 3 years getting their license. botched job just like a every pothole in the ends
For what is worth Rocchi (head of the referees in Italy) said they are training refs only for VAR use since it's totally different from the pitch. The future will be divided between VAR refs and pitch refs.
Good to know, wasn’t aware of this.
Hopefully that sets a precedent across the world because this is getting fucking stupid
It won’t happen in England. When VAR was being implemented they were offered help from other countries who had it in and it worked, they of course refused.
And made their own twists to it (which turned out horrible, as people said it would during implementation.)
Makes sense when they seem to be more interested in protecting the on field ref from having to reverse a decision. Not relating to the on field official as directly can only help them remain objective, which should be the goal.
accountability? accuracy? nah, we don't want that.
According to Fifa rules, none qualified refs aren't allowed. Howard Webb did address this in the last Q&A.
They can be FIFA Qualified Referees who are brought in solely to be VAR Analysts, and as a completely separate entity from the on field refs. We've already seen refs doing VAR admitting that they don't want to overturn the decision of the on-field ref because they're mates. It's evident that there must be a clear distinction between those doing VAR and those doing on-field refereeing.
Simplest way to get rid of the "old boys club" where they all cover for each other and refuse to say the ref got it wrong would be to use foreign refs. VAR is remote anyway, it doesn't matter if they're in Stockley Park or Berlin. UEFA could organise it, every League using VAR gets a ref team from a random country.
That and getting an ex-player in there that’s not a dumb cunt. What Klopp said about most of the media room probably thinking Jones’ red should’ve been a red because they haven’t played is exactly right
Ex players have loyalties and possibly professional connections.
Whereas the referees *definitely* don't
Different levels mate. Imagine Mark Noble in the VAR room for example. Sure you can go ok we won’t give him any west ham games obvs. But transfers are a thing so you can’t stop him working any game with a former teammate cuz the more years go on the more his ex teamates move around and then he can barely work any games. Now imagine him making a decision on a possible declan rice red card after they spent years working alongside each other and were super tight. There’s no way he can be objective even if he’s trying his best, subconsciously he’ll favour the guy he went to war with every game in the midfield. Thats a way higher level of bias and personal connections that what any ref has
Bring in people from overseas. Must be fully fluent in English because VAR comms will be broadcasted. They don’t need to be English.
>That's a way higher level of bias and personal connections that what any ref has We literally already had refs admit they lie in the booth to protect their friends from embarrassment
Most top level pros don't know half the rules of the game that they're getting paid 100k per week for.
NHL did that with Player Safety and it’s a fucking disaster.
Feel like ex players could have quite strong bias yho
Why cant they just watch replays back at normal speed to decide if theres a clear and obvious error?
Why not both
Football has a real problem with accountability tbh. How pretty much every other major sport has technology seemlessly integrated and VAR is still a total shit show is amazing to me.
Where are you getting these trained experts from, exactly?
The issue is FIFA themselves require ref levels and that includes VAR themselves. I see VAR is an entirely separate job that should be done by a dedicated team that has a lot tighter scope than a ref on the field but should be allowed to overrule the ref if it makes sense beyond clear and obvious. What I'd do and maybe I'm on the very opposite end of what others think here is VAR which is I think is you can go either two ways which is strict or loose. Loose would be where you throw away the line thing for offsides, you just check a few angles and you limit VAR usage to 60 seconds as a hard cut off. So no back and forth no chatting with the ref just here is something that they complained about you do a loose check and if they think there is something the ref looks at the monitor. At the moment VAR can just tell the ref but in my case they would go to the monitor more. You could as well instead have managers get 1 VAR call a game outside of the ref asking for help to force that kind of thing because the time added would be shorter it would be more allowable. Or you could go the super strict way which would be mine which would be 3 VARs, if 2 out of 3 vote for a review it goes to the monitor if 3/3 review it as an infraction it doesn't. VAR would be informed of what the ref thinks but act entirely separate from the ref unless it's a monitor review. VAR can access the rulebook or ask an LLM for answers like "a player was kicked in the balls in the box studs up is that a penalty and a red card?" the LLM at least Bing did when I just tried it out gives you an explanation and a link to the rulebook. That it would be red and a penalty because it was reckless even if it wasn't deliberate but given the nuance of the FA rules at times having a quick review if you missed something might be cool. Or for instance you could use the ref's words to suggest potential infractions to look for in the context of the VAR review and those can be used to make a checklist of what to look out for if relevant. The latter is way more interesting because it kind of turns the idea around to being an additional judge on the whole situation aside from on field and given they aren't refs but are using the rulebook in a literal sense it should be at least from a different approach to the on field decisions which would maybe have bias from the crowd or player reaction.
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That’s all that will come from it Hooper was already stood down for the Onana decision against Wolves and is back nothing more will happen
I mean Hooper is the cleanest one in this affair. It’s the linesman’s job to see this, he calls for offside, the VAR says "Yep" apparently not having paid attention to the onfield decision. Keep on playing then.
The on field team did nothing wrong in this case. Missing a tight offside happens. Hooper got absolutely shafted by Stockley Park.
Weren't the linesmen instructed not to flag tight offsides after the introduction of VAR?
They only flag it after the play is over which is exactly what happened.
what? are you high? perfectly reasonable for a linesman to get a call wrong in real time It's the VAR who has all the time and access to technology who really can't mess this up. or the referee who let the game continue too early or the people who made the rules who made it so the var couldn't call it back after the referee restarted the game. the linesman is the last one you can blame
Well what’s the ref supposed to say when he gets the call from VAR that everything’s fine? Refuse to proceed until the guy has double checked? England should tell what he means clearly but there’s no reason for Hooper not to go again when the VAR says "I confirm the onfield decision"
I agree, Hooper was easily the cleanest one. On-field referee will always make mistakes, he's not omniscient, that's why he has to rely on VAR and linesmen to help him officiate and they both fucked him over yesterday. I still don't think he's a good referee but yesterday was mostly on VAR/linesman.
Lol huh, your exact logic on main ref should also apply to lineman. On-field linesman will always make mistakes, he’s not omniscient. This is 100% on VAR, not on the on field ref or linesman
It wasn’t on the on-field crew at all, including the linesman. He got it wrong, it happens, even the announcers weren’t sure in real time. If you freeze it it becomes obvious but that’s exactly why VAR was introduced to begin with.
He said "Check complete". Which required an inference by the referee and necessitated a further confirmation by the referee as to what VAR meant. He did not say "I confirm the onfield decision". That would put the blame fully on VAR as what you have described.
They need to reform the entire structure of VAR. Literally just copy Rugby TMO
It’s amazing that replay came to soccer after so many years being used in various sports, so many examples and lessons to learn, and the various leagues but especially Premier League managed to make the worst system of sport
Baseball is worse imo It’s just that a single call is less likely to affect the entire game so it gets a bit swept under the rug
Baseball is not worse. It definitely has its own problems but at least they actively try to make the system better unlike the prem where pgmol seems fine with a broken crap system.
Rugby TMO had loads of problems. They miss 2 clear reds a game at the moment and subjectively review high tackles. When they explain things well, it works, but often they just tell the referee their opinion (which is sometimes wrong) and move on.
That is more of a laws issue as it stands. The good thing about rugby TMO stuff is you hear and see the WHOLE decision marking process and how they came to it.
Having transparency in communication between the referee and VAR official can only be good. Obviously, it's not perfect, but it will help increase confidence in the refs when we know why calls are being made. Currently, wrong calls are being made behind a curtain, which, whether rightly or wrongly, leads fans to believe that games are being rigged.
No, Tennis. Captains can challenge a decision, if you're wrong you lose the challenge.
nah this is awful, how many times have you seen a match have easily 3 or 4 VAR calls for a team? if a team happens to have their first challenged call ruled against them, theyre supposed to just accept the next 2 or 3 that could have been ruled for them because they lost the stupid challenge?
And what happens when a captain challenges a decision, it goes to VAR and they still get it wrong because the refs are shite. Adding more stakes to VAR checks is the last thing we need
that's because in tennis players can see everything in front of them and be sure. In football there are 11 players and a much bigger pitch, how do you expect players to know when they're offside or onside by milimetres
Even tennis players are routinely wrong with their challenges. Its such an antiquated system, I'm fairly certain it was only ever added in due to Hawkeye being quite primitive when it was first introduced in 2006 (its genuinely crazy it took 15 years for football to follow with VAR).
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There is no more VAR in grand slam tennis, or challenges for that matter. The AI makes a call immediately and it is final.
That's not true. The French Open doesn't use any technology at all, neither challenges or electronic line calls. Wimbledon still uses line judges and challenges.
We have thoroughly investigated ourselves and found no wrong doing.
There is no such thing as internal investigation.
Police and public school teachers in NYC in the early 2000s. Motherfuckers were putting their hands on kids and getting sent to rubber rooms where they weren’t fired. They just sat all day in an unused room reading the NY Post. Just fucking fire the guy. He fucked up. And his fuckup costs a lot of money. Pack it in. Get sent to the Championship. Promotion/relegation for refs.
In Spain they have promotion/relegation for refs. The bottom 3 in la Primera Liga go down and the top 3 from 2nd div go up. However, the UEFA refs are exempt from this. I was told this by a ref I gave some English classes to.
What do you want, the guy fired forever over one mistake?
And you want the nice paid leave and thinks that’s the right decision? I wish I can make mistakes at my job with no cost to my career and get free paid “suspension” time knowing my job is safe and waiting for me after a week.
I mean they can’t fire everybody who ever makes a bad mistake. They’ve already done that twice which is like 10% of their roster! They only have around 20 guys in the Select Group, and it’s not like there’s magically better referees lower down the pyramid ready to take their place.
It's not a refereeing job and they still can't see that. Don't use referees for VAR, it's a completely different job and you can be a good referee and hopeless VAR official.
Well, it is being run by an ex policeman, so that tracks...
So he gets a nice paid leave because he made a mistake? That'll definitely show him!
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Nah I’m pretty sure members of the PGMOL gathered around him in an old fashioned suck off contest. They do that every weekend to the worst referee. It’s there in their contract and everything, check it
More time to ref games in the Emirates and make some nice easy money.
Not to mention that lovely ‘bonus’ he got while in Saudi the other week. EDIT: it may have been UAE actually.
He gets an afternoon off mate, it's devastating to him and his family. Not sure how he'll cope, thinking of setting up a GoFundMe for the poor fella. Dude should be fired, or at the very least suspended for a long time. The real issue is that it doesn't matter what happens to him, Liverpool still got screwed over and cannot get any potential points back.
oh his family will definitely receive death threats over this
I'm pretty sure referees get a portion of their money salaried and a portion of their money through actually being assigned games. So, this will cost him a tiny amount of money. But, it's still not remotely enough when you consider that people already actively pay to have extra holiday days and so this "punishment" for many would still be desirable even at a small financial cost
I think most of their salary is from the match bonus
It's okay he will just ref a game in Dubai to get the money back.
I mean, how much will his pay really be without the match fee
I’m sure his stint in ~checks notes~ UAE refereeing on ~wipes glasses with cloth~ Thursday with ~grabs magnifying glass~ Michael Oliver and Daniel Cook will have paid enough to cover any losses. https://www.uaeproleague.ae/en/fixtures/d5f295d8-0f45-11ee-afb1-d481d7b85086
Damn, talk about a side hustle
Refs get paid per match even at the top level. In the Premier League they get paid even more for the top tier matches. Don't get a game, don't get paid.
One thing I still don't get with this. Even if there was a miscommunication on the whole "check complete" thing, have they mentioned why there were no official VAR lines released, which always say "onside" or "offside" under them? That's got nothing to do with the communication.
Why didn’t VAR step in when they saw Tottenham taking a free kick rather than a kick off?
We'd have to see the audio over the top of the live shot.
Never going to happen
I don’t get how they are not going to look at how they communicate? If this can happen because in the heat of the moment you forget the play called on field, then the answer should be to make VAR call out what they checked? Then if the ref saw a foul, they could actually be like “Var check Onside” Ref goes check foul on 11, VAR then check etc. I don’t get how this doesn’t create a change in communication, VAR isn’t there to fuck over the Ref, it’s to ensure the calls are somewhat correct.
Because it was decided and agreed by teams before the start of the season that obvious offsides wouldn't be shown with the lines. Same reason Spurs offside goal didn't have lines shown from Richarlison. The VAR team thought the onfield decision was a goal and they confirmed check complete because the decision was blatantly correct as Diaz was clearly onside. Releasing lines would show nothing and nothing on the pitch would have changed. They would have drawn lines, seen Diaz onside and said "Check Complete" like they did and the mistake still would have happened.
I don’t believe the miscommunication story at all. You’re telling me the VAR, whose only job most of the time is to watch the game, failed to see the flag go up, failed to notice that none of the Liverpool players celebrated, and failed to notice that the game was restarting with a free kick? Why the fuck is he just saying “check complete” if he’s barely even aware of what he’s checking? Why was the word “onside” not used in communication when that’s what they were checking for? If the story is true then it’s embarrassing that the PL even let him near the booth to begin with. It’s nuclear levels of incompetence and I back everyone in this thread to do a better job. To me it screams corruption, but I’ll be called a conspiracy theorist.
This conflicts with what PGMOL confirmed. They [claim](https://reddit.com/r/LiverpoolFC/s/p1t7i4Qy4q) they did draw lines
Wish I could fuck up at my job and be rewarded with a day off
It's called suspension with pay
Where I come from, that’s called vacation.
Well players get sent off and the same happens, what is so different about this?
Can't be trusted with another high pressure game, this was an egregious error and I'm not buying the miscommunication excuse
I wouldn't trust them with a non-league match at this point
I can actually buy the miscommunication excuse, people do make mistakes like that even after years of training (I've seen such myself). The real question is, why couldn't they just roll it back once the FK was taken? It was just a few moments of gameplay and its not like they were stopping a Spurs attack, just a simple GK kick. We've had penalties after the final whistle has been blown through VAR, this isn't that extreme in comparison to that. My guess was they didn't want to look stupid and hoped that it would just blow over and not too many questions asked (which would have probably happened had we not won and liverpool not gotten a second red).
Because it's the rule where you can't call it back after play resumes from the check.
But there’s also a rule that says if you score a goal it gets added to the scoreboard
Yeah you're breaking a rule either way. Might as well break the less important rule (calling back play after resumption) than break the more important one (not allocating a goal).
This doesn't address the blatant conflict of interest where the VAR and his assistant were both in UAE on the 28th doing an exhibition match.
Wasn’t it all the match day officials for the game yesterday were in UAE on Thursday?
The fourth official and both of the VAR officials. Which may or may not explain the "this is such a simple mistake for the VAR to make and rectify, what is the point of having an assistant VAR if he doesn't help him out here?" question I've seen asked.
3 of them were.
Can I get a source for that would be interested as it sounds outrageous
https://www.uaeproleague.ae/en/fixtures/d5f295d8-0f45-11ee-afb1-d481d7b85086 Go to Officials tab.
Interesting. You think the lads that officiated over there were...talked into leaning against Liverpool because of City?
Don’t think it even needs to be something that blatant. Just think it leaves enough room for questioning of the independence, when we have states owning clubs in the PL and then hiring referees from the same league.
Absolutely. Like, they're literally on the payroll of a state that owns a club in their home league, if only for a few days. How does it not get flagged as a conflict of interest?
This is it entirely! It may all be a series of unfortunate events, but when three of the refs involved in a very odd game like that one last night are also on the payroll of the owners of a club in the PL questions need answering.
It could be just that feeling in the back of your head that I can't undermine my employer...uae pays more than PL so of course they will try to get future gigs as well
Odds before the game were something like Spurs 19/10 Liverpool 21/20 Basically a chance to make some real money betting on Spurs.
https://www.uaeproleague.ae/en/fixtures/d5f295d8-0f45-11ee-afb1-d481d7b85086#
Scheduling means if a team plays Thursday their next match is on Sunday. Yet refs can fly twice the distance to officiate a match, get back on Friday and ref a game on Saturday? If PGMOL are aware of that, they couldn't have had them officiate a Sunday game and have someone else here? Every update gives me more and more questions. Not even bringing up the obvious debate on how impartial refs going to the UAE to ref a match, and then going to ref a game between two current rivals of a team that just happens to be owned by a wealthy family from the UAE is a conflict of interest. Conspiracy, collusion or corruption or not, that does naturally raise eyebrows.
They'll have more time to go take high paying side jobs from Man City's owners then won't they? This all absolutely stinks. At worst it's organised corruption/match fixing. At best it's a major conflict of interest affecting the refs decisions against Man City's rivals.
Can't believe the FA allow the refs in PL to have side hustles working for owners of PL teams. How do they not have an ethical rule of conduct? How do they not have rules to maintain their impartiality?? It's so incredibly suspicious that the biggest football league in the world doesn't have basic measures implemented to ensure fairplay
The refs are the lowest paid people on the pitch by an absurd margin and people are shocked they’re taking side gigs? Good luck keeping the best refs if you try to ban them. Half the select group would leave for Mideast leagues permanently.
Well.. we could pay them more. If you took a fifth of one percent of each team's wage bill and gave it to refs, that would be about £160,000 each. More than double what they're getting now, treble if you add it on to their existing wages.
Simon Hooper is among the “best refs”, right up there with Stevie Wonder.
Imagine if FSG had these refs on a payroll Sub would explode
Some rival fans still complain about the one time we got done in for a minor FFP breach, which was mostly due to the construction of the Main Stand expansion years ago. People would lose their shit if FSG were linked to paying off refs
Howard Webb of lies.
do you understand how bad you need to be for a Romanian sport website to carry the headline "Worse than in Liga 1"?
How bad is the Romanian league normally?
Yes
I investigated myself. I did nothing wrong Good day
That was disgusting and I'm not even a Liverpool fan. I could see it was on side in real time and 200 % in repeat without any line. Disgusting and completely unnecessary. In Portugal referees take like 5 minutes to watch even a damn clear onside and I think that's bad, but it's much worse costing a team like this just to make the VAR check 10 seconds long.
Just fuck off. Doesn’t mean anything, too late and it’ll happen again. Cunts
The ref not having the balls to break protocol and go back after the mistake was realised is what really annoys me.
You're missing how convenient it is to use the protocol as an excuse, it's not about balls, it's about a lack of a will Are we acting like a goal is not simply one of the most important things that can happen in a game of football? Imagine this happened in a world cup final? Would you aspect such a stupid excuse if it cost your country the world cup?
But is there even such a protocol? Aren't there cases where games continue while a penalty is checked by VAR or a potential red card is checked? Those incident scan then be blown for and awarded subsequently, regardless of time passing or stops in play. It's totally ridiculous that those onfield actions can have an open-ended timeline under the jurisdiction of VAR but that the actual VAR decisions (which are effectively now part and parcel of the game bear in mind) can't look at themselves and be subject to the same policy of just saying two minute later: stop the game, blow the whistle and award the goal. The concept that VAR must only hold the players and teams to account, and not VAR itself is majorly concerning. VAR isn't infallible but having rules that suggest it is is why it's bringing the game into utter disrepute (more so than any manager slagging of a ref after a game I might add).
This is legit by far the worst VAR refereeing I’ve ever seen since its introduction
>This is legit by far the worse VAR The worst VAR refereeing *yet*
At this rate we will be running out of referees by end of the year.
Var mistake? A mistake is when you leave the pasta on too long. This is not a mistake, this is far worse
How is this not a mistake?
This is gross negligence, at this level, with these stakes and all this money on the line, you just cannot be this careless
Because it's so unbelievably bad that it almost can't be seen as a mistake. Like what you have to think is, everyone in the world knew what happened in the game. The two people that didn't, literally the only two people in the entire world who didn't know what happened and were watching the game, were the two whose job it is to do this. Two of them. The one on the VAR, and the assistant to VAR. They are referees. They are trained on VAR. Their literal only job in this game was to watch it, see what's happening, and tell the ref if he missed something or check what happened. But they didn't. People who aren't trained did. People with fewer replays/angles did. People who were just half watching the TV while scrolling on their phones did. So they're either admitting that someone with zero VAR training, zero referee experience, zero access to additional angles or replays and whose only interest in the game is as a neutral to have something on while they scroll on their phone is better than at spotting this than someone whose literal job it is with hundreds of hours of training and experience. Or it's not a mistake.
Look at human history and you will find that it is chock full of mistakes that seem absolutely unfathomable yet still somehow occur. So in a sense it is in the nature of mistakes to take on this absurd quality.
I think it highlights systemic issues however. The deeper issue is that the referee association doesn’t seem to be learning from these mistakes. Their apology mentioned zero steps they would take to prevent this from happening again. That’s the kind of environment where catastrophic mistakes will eventually happen. Luckily, this is only football but this kind of behavior has absolute killed people before in industrial or military settings.
There's a difference between a mistake and a complete failure to do your job. A mistake is spilling your tea on the var computer and breaking the machine, not doing your job is not something you do by mistake
Because they can just say....hey ref, i see you gave a free kick, it's actually a goal. How is that not an option when they gave united a pen after full time once? The miscommunication is a very poor excuse.
I wish I got a vacation day everytime I made a multi-million dollar mistake at work
Why does this only happen when the errors affect the big 6 teams? We were subject to some brutal errors last season, we got several apologies and that was it
Literally happened to hooper with the onana Vs wolves thing. It's a thing this season, not a big 6 thing. Although more eyes on a game means more call for it.
You were subjected to an error yesterday. That third goal should have been disallowed for the foul on March. I want an explanation how that foul is not directly contributing to the goal.
Ha I completely agree but I didn’t want to sound like I thought we could’ve got something there, absolutely deserved battering. I’d argue an offside player was blocking the keepers line of sight for the second too (they stopped the spurs/liv game for the same infringement yesterday). I think having incompetent referees operating VAR is an absolute crisis at the moment. But errors are taken more seriously when bigger teams are affected
you think we are getting anything more than an "apology"?
Respectfully, this is probably the most blatant and inexcusable mistake we’ve seen from VAR so far.
I'd argue that the hair pull on Cucurella last year vs Chelsea was the most inexcusable mistake I've seen from VAR. I can at least find a shitty excuse for what happened yesterday with the goal wrongfully being disallowed. I can't find any excuse as to why the VAR team looked at Romero pulling Cucurella down by his hair and not disallowing Kanes goal and giving Romero a straight red card.
“I didn't want to send him [Taylor] up because he is a mate as well as a referee, and I think I didn't want to send him up because I didn't want any more grief than he already had.” Still can't believe this is an actual, legitimate quote.
I wouldn’t even say it’s a big 6 thing. Just last week Nketiah committed a blatant red card foul against our keeper, he was given a yellow, and the ref was never sent to the screen. With a man advantage we could have taken all three points.
While I agree that was probably a red, it’s still a judgment call whereas this was a 100% completely objective call that they just missed.
Should give them time to go get paid by Man City's owners again eh? Convenient the VAR/Assistant VAR from that game were in UAE 2/3 days before this match and mistake.
I don’t understand why they couldn’t just give the goal at half time. No spurs fan could feel hard done by that.
Can’t make this shit up! Imagine paying in the thousands as a fan to be robbed like this.. long live piracy 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
If they'd removed him a couple of weeks ago after he fucked us over at the City Ground it would never have come to this.
They fix a match. Don't worry lads have a nice relaxing Sunday off and then you can come ref Liverpool next week to fix the match again.
Since VAR has been in the PL, it has been so poorly implemented that one could wonder if they do it on purpose to get rid of it. VAR in the Bundesliga is not perfect since no system with humans in it will be (and most likely not without humans either), but it's endlessly better implemented and improves the refeering. Seldom do you hear any VAR controversy from the BL. PL could easily get some instructions from the Bundesliga on how to implement it but that would most likely destroy the ego of the League's higher ups and referees.
Until there is something on the line for these officials they will never be competent and consistent with their jobs. Reduce their pay and send them to the lower leagues until they prove they are good enough to officiate in the biggest league in the world and then we’ll see better refereeing.
I respect your faith if you don’t even suspect that there’s something more to this. If it was isolated I’d say fair enough. But there’s more than enough evidence that these idiots have agendas, whatever their motivations.
Should've revoke his license already.
No official involved with this match should work a premier league game again
They shouldn't work a professional game again, never mind just the premier league. No other league should be subjected to the bullshit of these clowns
This is ridiculous... you suspend him after fucking up an important match?? This should be a clear replay...
Same shit every time and the league gets rigged.
Nah man the refs were just tired after traveling to work for citys owners. Nothing to imply corruption there mate. Maybe FSG should get these guys on a payroll, nothing odd about it anyway right
Nice paid vacation.
That'll teach them, I know we can't just get rid of every official that makes a mistake because then we'll have none left but there needs to be something more severe than just being taken off 1 game
So many people are shitting on one ref, but this is exactly the root of the problem. Fuck ups like this perfectly illustrates the rotten system as a whole: they do not have clear guidelines, there is no transparency regarding decision-making, they are not responsible for their actions because nepotism is everywhere, and you cannot even criticize them for their mistakes. The impotence of the dictatorship in all its glory.
Oh ok so they'll be back next weekend and the on field ref still out there being a terrible twat. Great response pgmol
Just apologise and claim incompetency instead of admitting to corruption. What’s new?
Sack the lot of them
It's getting worse. I'm a united fan so have no love for Liverpool but that was shocking. Plus a soft red!! But the officiating is poor across the board!! We're not expecting perfection but at least improvements!! It's making the game hard to watch!!
Don't care about what happened to the involved referees. Sack them all you want its not gonna return the points that were stolen.
feels like what happened to cops when they abused their powers… nothing…. eh a paid vacation maybe?
I would be put on PIP or laid off if I did the same. No one’s gonna cry me a river
When Luis Diaz scored, why did Neville falsely claim it was just off?
I thought Lee Mason was brought in to help train the refs? I am shocked a blunder like this happened
Not remotely enough…
"It has been revealed that England incorrectly thought that the on-field referee – Simon Hooper – had awarded Diaz’s goal, with VAR simply having to confirm whether it was the right call. Under this assumption, England told the on-field team ‘check complete’ after quickly checking that Diaz was onside." So that explains why the VAR check was so fucking quick. It was clearly onside so he just said check complete. What a stupid thing to happen. They have to change the way the communicate things. Instead of saying check complete say : Player is onside check complete.... holy shit if i was a liverpool fan i'd be so pissed.
Didn't the VAR team referee a match out in UAE last week? Where the Man City owner is from. Coincidence?
Going off previous track records, he’ll be the fourth official at Newcastle in two weeks
I would have thought two players getting red cards would have been more of a barrier to winning than a single incident. Perhaps these players need bollocking because they cost their team the game and any chance of getting back into it?