Did officials’ flawed positioning lead to ruling out Van Dijk’s goal?

Howard Webb’s defence on Tuesday’s edition of Match Officials Mic’d Up for why Virgil van Dijk’s goal against Manchester City was disallowed is unlikely to have appeased Liverpool fans still aggrieved at the decision.

But while focus has understandably shifted onto Webb’s description of the decision as “reasonable”, there was another altogether more standout insight into the match officials’ decision-making process during the programme.

Namely, that the decision to rule out the goal was effectively made, contrary to Sky Sports’ previous reporting of the incident, by the assistant referee rather than referee Chris Kavanagh, VAR Michael Oliver or assistant VAR Timothy Wood.

That hitherto-unrealised distinction is clearly revealed in the audio transcript of the officials’ debate carried in the programme:

Assistant referee: “Robertson’s in line of vision, right in front of the keeper. He’s ducked under the ball. He’s very, very close to him. I think he’s [in] line of vision. I think he’s (Donnarumma) been impacted, mate.”

Referee: “Ok, so offside then.”

Assistant referee: “I think offside.”

From that transcript it is plain not only is the assistant referee the instigator of the decision to rule out the goal but, from Kavanagh’s passive reply, that the assistant referee is effectively chief decision maker.

While this insight is important in achieving a full picture of what took place, it does though raise fresh doubts about the validity of the decision.

After all, simply put, the big picture of the incident laid out above shows that the assistant referee was singularly mispositioned to make such a call regarding the line of vision between City goalkeeper Donnarumma, Van Dijk and Robertson – with the obvious inference that if Robertson is in the line of vision then he would likely, if not decisively, impact the City goalkeeper.

But the assistant referee, as captured above, is 90 degrees to the action.

Kavanagh himself is far better placed to judge whether Robertson is in line of vision and impacting Donnarumma’s actions. So, too, of course are the VARs, Oliver and Wood.

But despite this flaw and uneven position, it is the assistant referee’s immediate verdict – “Robertson’s in line of vision” – that is, judging by the flow of communication between the four officials, the central, pivotal part of the decision taken.

The decision to rule out the goal is instantly set in motion, Kavanagh is reduced to the role of passenger and it is left for the VARs to determine if a clear and obvious error has been made.

But, as Webb rightly notes in the context of the “subjectivity” of decisions around offsides, where a player does not play the ball, determining a ‘clear and obvious’ error on a non-factual decision would require an extraordinarily high threshold to be made. Put differently: from the moment the assistant referee called “in line of vision” there was all-but no going back.

It certainly appears odd that the VAR damns Robertson by asserting he “makes an obvious movement directly” in front of Donnarumma, when that action actually consisted of Robertson ducking away from the ball. It is also wholly inconclusive how that apparently-damning action fits with a rule, which in full reads: “make an obvious action which clearly impacts on the ability of an opponent to play the ball”.

But any flaw in the VAR’s reasoning is rendered all-but irrelevant by the primacy of the on-field ruling.

None of this is to say that Webb is wrong in asserting the decision to rule out the goal was “not unreasonable”. There are indeed reasonable grounds to disallow it.

But it’s also reasonable to question whether the goal should have been diluted to an instant verdict about whether Robertson was in the line of vision and if that assertion should have been taken by an official far removed from a line of vision to see as much.

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