Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp speaks out on Luis Diaz offside as PGMOL accept blame | Football | Sport
Jurgen Klopp has declared that the lines were “drawn wrong” by the VAR team when ruling Luis Diaz’s goal offside during Liverpool’s controversial 2-1 loss to Tottenham on Saturday. The PGMOL have since come out and apologised for a “significant human error” that led to the incorrect decision.
It looked as though Diaz had put his team 1-0 up in the first half after his side were reduced to ten men, however, on-field officials ruled that Diaz received the ball in an offside position despite the outstretched leg of Cristian Romero appearing to play him onside. VAR then failed to intervene and overturn the decision after taking a closer look at it.
Speaking after the game, Klopp insisted that it was “never” offside and a post-match review of the incident by the PGMOL revealed that he was correct. “Someone opened their smartphone [at half time], we saw it on Instagram or Twitter or whatever,” he said. “It’s not offside. Never. They drew their lines wrong.
“It is clear. The ball is in between Mo’s legs. I’m pretty sure people will speak about that. It is just so tough to deal with it.”
The PGMOL have now released a statement admitting that they got the decision wrong and will be launching an investigation into the lack of intervention by VAR. “PGMOL acknowledges a significant human error occurred during the first half of Tottenham Hotspur vs Liverpool.
“The goal by Luis Diaz was disallowed for offside by the on-field team of match officials. This was a clear and obvious factual error and should have resulted in the goal being awarded through VAR intervention. However, the VAR failed to intervene.
“PGMOL will conduct a full review into the circumstances which led to the error. PGMOL will immediately be contacting Liverpool at the conclusion of the fixture to acknowledge the error.”
It was a frustrating afternoon for Liverpool, who will feel hard done by. Besides Diaz’s disallowed goal, there was also a lot of debate surrounding Curtis Jones’ sending-off moments before.
Jones made contact with the ball as he attempted to shield it from Yves Bissouma but caught the Spurs midfielder high on the follow-through. Former Tottenham player Jamie Redknapp insisted it wasn’t a red card, stating: “I don’t see that as a red card, he wasn’t endangering the player if that’s a red card we won’t have many players left on the field this season.”