Premier League Reveals Steps Taken To Prevent Repeat Of Luis Diaz VAR Error

The head of referees in the Premier League, Howard Webb, claims that precautions have been taken to prevent a recurrence of the VAR error that led to Luis Diaz’s disallowed goal in the game between Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur.

The VAR error which overlooked an inaccurate offside ruling against Liverpool’s Diaz on September 30, was upheld by VAR Darren England.

After 34 minutes, Curtis Jones’ dismissal for a challenge on Yves Bissouma left Liverpool with 10 men. Despite that, Diaz put Liverpool ahead at Tottenham Hotspur stadium but the goal was ruled out for offside.

The goal ought to have stood because replays showed that Diaz was onside.

The VAR team – England, his assistant Dan Cook, and the replay operator – evaluated the replays, and England told on-field referee, Simon Hooper the check was complete – which means he indicated the offside call was correct and the match could be restarted with a Spurs free-kick.

Hooper restarted the game after indicating to the players that Diaz was ruled offside by the VAR.

The realization that this was an error dawned on the VAR team. However, the team realized they were not permitted under the laws of the game relating to VAR, to unturn the decision since the game had already restarted.

“We’ve put quite a lot of steps in place to ensure the error that we saw doesn’t happen again,” Webb told Match Officials: Mic’d Up.

While speaking with Sky Sports, Webb added, “One of the things this brought into sharp focus is the need to reiterate some of those communication protocols which are really valuable in VAR to prevent this type of thing happening.

“We got all of the officials together, we spoke through the need to go through that process very diligently.

“We’re really disappointed for the game, we’re disappointed for our reputation.

“We worked hard over the subsequent days to have a look at what we needed to do to put in place those safeguards around the communication to avoid that sort of thing happening again.”

He continued: “One of the things that we have to do is put things in place to ensure that should we have human error, it doesn’t have the damaging impact that we saw on this occasion.

“We want the on-field referee to communicate to the VAR what the on-field decision is, very clearly. Then the VAR to go back to the on-field referee and acknowledge that they’ve heard that properly.

“The VAR goes through the process then of checking the situation giving clear direction to the replay operator to get the right angles, speaking to that assistant VAR as they go through that as well, so the assistant VAR can be another check and balance, before communicating to the field, speaking to the AVAR [assistant VAR] to say what their intended direction of travel is going to be.

“Then, at that moment, not just saying ‘check complete, check complete’ because what are you check completing?”