After his team benefited from a mistake by the officials in Saturday’s match against Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur manager Ange Postecoglou claimed he is not a fan of video assistant referee (VAR) since the system makes things more complicated.
Tottenham won 2-1 at home, and the referee organisation Professional Game Match Officials Ltd acknowledged that it was a mistake to rule out Liverpool winger Luis Diaz’s goal in the first half of the game.
They attributed this mistake to human error.
“I think I’m on record saying that I’ve never really been a fan of it since it came in,” Postecoglou, who previously managed Scottish Premiership club Celtic, told reporters after the game.
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“Not for any other reason than I think that it complicates areas of the game that I thought were pretty clear in the past, but I can see at the same time why it was inevitable that technology would come in.
“We have to deal with it.
“The game is littered with historical refereeing decisions that weren’t right, but we all accepted that it was part of the game because we’re dealing with human beings,” Postecoglou said.
“I think that people are under the misconception that VAR is going to be errorless.
“I don’t think there’s any technology because so much of our game isn’t factual.
“It’s down to interpretation, and they’re still human beings.
“When you put such a high bar on something, it invariably is going to fail, so if people are thinking that VAR is going to be something that at some point that is perfect, that’s never going to happen.”
With nine men after the dismissals of winger Diogo Jota and midfielder Curtis Jones, Liverpool was defeated by a Joel Matip own goal in injury time.
Juergen Klopp, the manager of Liverpool, claimed that the game’s momentum was altered by VAR’s decision to disallow Diaz’s goal. Liverpool had last lost to Spurs in 2017 and had only suffered one defeat to them in their previous 21 league encounters.
Spurs are now second in the Premier League standings, one point behind defending champion Manchester City, and Liverpool are fourth after seven games, another point behind.
“Who does that help now?,” Klopp said when asked about the referees’ statement. “We will not get points for it, so it doesn’t help. Nobody expects 100% right decisions on-field, but I think we all thought when VAR came in, it might make things easier…
“We score that goal. It was top, top, top, outstandingly well played. In a game where you don’t get a lot to feel better, you make that, that’s super-important information, that’s how we can hurt them, that’s how we can beat them, stuff like this.
“So, it was super-difficult, but the boys dealt extremely well with it.”