Liverpool VAR mistake: Ange Postecoglou says it is unlikely Spurs would have let Reds score | Football News

Ange Postecoglou says it is unlikely he would have allowed Liverpool to score after Luis Diaz’s goal was wrongly disallowed against Tottenham.

Jurgen Klopp, the Liverpool manager, raised the possibility of a replay after Diaz’s goal was chalked off for offside due to a mix-up in the VAR room as Spurs went on to win 2-1 in stoppage time.

Asked if he would have let Liverpool score had the officials given him the chance, Postecoglou said: “I just don’t see that.

“If we want managers to be the arbiters of these kind of things… we’ve got pretty hefty responsibilities at our football clubs but we’re not the custodians.

“I wouldn’t make a decision that could potentially send a club down on the back of what my beliefs are.

“In that moment, if somebody could tell me that they could explain everything that went on within the prism of 30 seconds… I have to make a decision and it wasn’t going to happen.

“It’s different if it’s something clear. It was a bad error through a lack of communication but it wasn’t something that was easily explainable. If it was easily explainable, I would assume there would have been more uproar than there was.”

Diaz thought he had put Liverpool – who were down to 10 players at the time – ahead at Spurs, only for the assistant referee to flag him offside.

The VAR review showed the winger was actually onside but Darren England, the VAR, and Dan Cook, the assistant VAR, mistakenly thought the on-field decision had been to award the goal, meaning they told Simon Hooper, the referee, to stick with his decision.

Audio released by PGMOL reveals England and Cook were alerted to their error by the replay operator in the seconds after the game restarted with a Spurs free-kick.

The officials felt they were unable to alert Hooper to their error and advise him to award Liverpool the goal due to the IFAB laws which state decisions of that ilk cannot be reversed once play has restarted.

Speaking on Wednesday, Klopp said: “It’s really important that, as big as football is and important as football is, we deal with it in a proper way.

“All the people involved, the on-field referee, linesman, fourth official and especially in this case VAR, didn’t do that on purpose. It was an obvious mistake and I think there would have been solutions for it afterwards.

“Some people probably don’t want me to say but, not as the manager of Liverpool so much more as a football person, the only outcome should be a replay. That’s how it is.

“It probably will not happen.”

Sky Sports News understand any request by Liverpool to replay the match would be rejected.

‘Error wasn’t obvious at the time’

Postecoglou – who said he was unaware of the officials’ error until his post-match press conference – warned that VAR will never be a perfect system.

“It’s a little bit of a weird one because usually when something happens you get a sense of it during the game,” explained the Spurs boss. “I didn’t and I don’t think anyone did have a sense that something significant had happened.

“Whatever I say is maybe going to be seen through the prism of us being the beneficiaries of the mistake but it wasn’t an integrity issue. It wasn’t a misappropriation of the law, it was an error in communication.

“It’s never happened before but we’re in a new space with technology. We want a faultless system that will never exist, unless we want our game like other codes, where the event goes on for four hours and we’re explaining every decision.”

Postecoglou also urged PGMOL to learn from their error rather than punishing England by not assigning him to future Liverpool games, as has been reported.

“I don’t know if that’s actually been decided,” Postecoglou said of England. “I’d be surprised if they have gone that way.

“It’s a significant error but it’s a human being that’s made the error. I don’t think there’s anything that needs to go too far-reaching. We need to make sure what happened doesn’t happen again.

“Don’t ask managers and players about the rules of the game, we don’t know half of them. Referees do. We shouldn’t be commenting because, if a referee commented on the tactics of a game, we’d all be jumping up and down.

“We’ve got to respect their position. Mistakes are part of our game – it’s not supposed to be flawless.

“When I listened to that audio, saying ‘check complete’… somebody obviously thought that’s a good way of finalising things. The logical thing to say would be ‘goal for Liverpool’ but I’m saying that with ignorance of not really knowing how it’s set up.

“But when you listen to that, there’s probably better ways of communicating a clear decision and I hope that’s what they’re addressing, rather than the individual that made the mistake.

“That would be a dereliction of the game. That’s like me hanging out a player and saying ‘you’re never playing again’.”