Howard Webb insists VAR Darren England was RIGHT not to stop the game once he realised he’d made a howler to deny Liverpool… as refs’ chief reveals changes that have been made to process

• Howard Webb has spoken about Luis Diaz’s disallowed goal against Tottenham
• The goal should have stood, but was wrongly given offside by the VAR official
• Listen to the latest episode of Mail Sport’s podcast ‘It’s All Kicking Off!’

PGMOL chief Howard Webb has finally had his say on the most controversial decision of the Premier League season to date after Luis Diaz had a goal incorrectly disallowed during Liverpool’s 2-1 defeat by Tottenham last month.

The incident occurred in the first half of the clash at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, with Mohamed Salah playing Diaz through on goal and the Colombian winger finishing past Guglielmo Vicario.

The offside flag belatedly went up, leading to an obligatory VAR check. Replays confirmed Diaz was actually onside and the goal should have stood, but VAR official Darren England wrongly thought the goal had originally been given, and uttered the words ‘check complete’.

The on-field team believed this to mean that the offside call was correct, and the game restarted with a free-kick to Tottenham.

By the time the error had been spotted, play had got underway again and the laws of the game dictate that VAR can no longer intervene at this point.

Luis Diaz thought he had opened the scoring for Liverpool against Tottenham last month

Replays showed the goal should have stood, but the VAR official misunderstood the original decision and called ‘check complete’, meaning the goal was wrongly ruled out

The VAR official considered stopping the game after it restarted to correct his mistake but opted not to. PGMOL chief Howard Webb (above) has backed this decision

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The mistake has caused uproar throughout the game, with Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp calling for a replay of the fixture, while Sky Sports pundit Paul Merson was involved in a heated on-air exchange with former Premier League referee Mike Dean on Saturday over England’s decision to not stop the game after realising his blunder.

Webb joined Michael Owen to discuss the incident on Match Officials: Mic’d Up on Tuesday night, and insisted England did the right thing in not stepping in.

When asked by Owen whether the game should have been retrospectively stopped to rectify the error, Webb said: ‘I understand why people would ask that question. Actually, the VAR and the AVAR asked themselves that question too when the penny dropped as to what had happened, I think 20 seconds had passed.

‘At that point they considered whether they could intervene to stop the game but they recognised that the laws of the game, set by FIFA and the IFAB, doesn’t allow that.

‘There’s obviously a process in place that sits in the laws of the game about how we use VAR to make sure it is delivered consistently throughout every league in the world. And it doesn’t allow you to go back in those circumstances. As such they decided not to intervene.’

Having clarified why the game could not be paused, Webb revealed tweaks to VAR could be made by global governing bodies in the near future that would allow off-field officials to step in if they’ve made an initial error.

‘I know that IFAB, in fact before this situation even happened, I knew that they were going to do a full review of the laws of the game relating to the use of VAR,’ Webb told Owen.

‘It has been in place for seven years now, when it was written there had never been a game that had utilised VAR anywhere in the world. They put a protocol in place and it has served the game really well. But now we have lived experience of situations like we saw this week.

‘We can feed into that as well and IFAB will look into whether there is a need to tweak some of it. I am sure they will be looking into how this aspect of VAR is used as well.’

One of the main points of contention following the howler has been England saying ‘check complete’ and not clarifying exactly what he had been looking at.

Webb acknowledged there was some ambiguity in England’s language which played a part in the wrong decision being made, and laid out the changes that have been made in the days since to stop something similar happening in the future.

‘What we have to do is put things in place so that should we have human error it doesn’t have the damage or the impact that we saw on this occasion,’ Webb explained.

‘One of the things that this has brought into sharp focus is the need to reiterate some of those communication protocols that are really valuable in VAR to prevent this kind of thing happening.

Jurgen Klopp called for a replay of the fixture last week, with the incident widely being viewed as the most controversial decision of the season to date

Webb has revealed changes made to VAR protocol to help prevent officials like Darren England (pictured) making similar mistakes again

‘We want the on-field referee to communicate to the VAR what the on-field decision is very clearly and then for the VAR to go back to the referee and acknowledge that they heard that properly.

‘The VAR then goes through the process of checking the situation and giving the replay operator clear instruction to get the angles, speaking to the assistant VAR so they can be another check and balance. 

‘Then before speaking to the on-field officials, speaking to the AVAR to discuss what the direction of travel will be. At that moment, not just saying ‘check complete’ as, what are you confirming? In this case, check complete, offside confirmed, which would be another trigger to the on-field official to know they have gone in the wrong direction.

‘We’ve put quite a lot of steps in place to ensure the error that we saw in that important game doesn’t happen again.’

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