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Liverpool Football Club released a statement on Sunday night that seemingly threatened potential legal action against the Premier League’s officiating organization, the PGMOL (Professional Game Match Officials Limited).
The statement, which acknowledges but does not accept the PGMOL’s admission of fault, comes after Liverpool had a legitimate goal — that would’ve given them a 1-0 lead in what was arguably the biggest match of the season thus far — disallowed to due to what the PGMOL called “significant human error.”
Why was Luis Diaz’s goal disallowed for offside when he was clearly onside?
The long and short of that human error is that, despite the fact that there are four people in the Premier League’s VAR hub, none of them realized that Diaz’s goal had been called offside and not given. Therefore, while reviewing the footage, they said “check complete,” thinking they were affirming the on-field decision of a goal (which it wasn’t).
Ultimately, the refs were either unintentionally not paying attention to the match they were supposed to be officiating or were intentionally not doing their job correctly for unknown reasons.
VAR incorrectly believed that Luis Diaz's disallowed goal had been awarded on-field 🔴
The 'check complete' was supposed to signal that the goal should have stood ⚽✅ pic.twitter.com/0qOJmYjpsM
— Sky Sports News (@SkySportsNews) October 1, 2023
Ultimately, Tottenham Hotspur would go on to take a 1-0 lead just minutes after Diaz’s wrongly disallowed goal. Despite being down to 10 men, Liverpool would equalize before halftime, only to then eventually lose after having another man sent off — forward Diogo Jota, as a result of another set of extremely questionable officiating — and a last-second own goal from defender Joel Matip.
Liverpool releases strong statement that seemingly hints at potential legal action against the PGMOL
In their statement, Liverpool said that the sporting integrity of the Premier League had been undermined and expressed a “clear need for escalation and resolution.”
“Liverpool Football Club acknowledges PGMOL’s admission of their failures last night. It is clear that the correct application of the laws of the game did not occur, resulting in sporting integrity being undermined. We fully accept the pressures that match officials work under but these pressures are supposed to be alleviated, not exacerbated, by the existence and implementation of VAR,” the statement begins.
“It is therefore unsatisfactory that sufficient time was not afforded to allow the correct decision to be made and that there was no subsequent intervention. That such failings have already been categorized as ‘significant human error’ is also unacceptable. Any and all outcomes should be established only by the review and with full transparency.”
“This is vital for the reliability of future decision-making as it applies to all clubs with learnings being used to make improvements to processes in order to ensure this kind of situation cannot occur again. In the meantime, we will explore the range of options available, given the clear need for escalation and resolution.”
In addition to the Diaz offside, the double-yellows for Jota, and the red card for Curtis Jones (the most legitimate of the controversial, game-deciding calls), questions have also arisen from the fact that two of the referees in the VAR room — Darren England and Dan Cook — had officiated at a match held in the United Arab Emirates, the country that owns league-leaders Manchester City, just 48 hours prior to the match.
Had Liverpool beaten Spurs on Saturday, they would have surpassed City and gone to the top of the Premier League.