Manchester City defender Kyle Walker has given his opinion on the VAR decision which deprived Liverpool of a goal against Tottenham Hotspur.
We all know the story now. Luis Diaz scored against Spurs in September to score Liverpool’s 10-man goal, but VAR incorrectly communicated an offside message.
The incident has sparked much debate in the football world, as City player Walker recently commented.
Speaking to the Manchester Evening News, the 33-year-old admitted he has mixed opinions on the issue.
“I like it when it helps us and I don’t like it when it doesn’t help us!” said the former Tottenham player.
“Sometimes talking to your friends about whether it was a goal or whether it was an offside takes away from the conversation about football, so that takes something away too. Sometimes things don’t go well because of that.”
In his specific comments on the Diaz decision, Walker suggested that the case should be closed two weeks later.
“They came out and apologized to Liverpool for this,” he added. “It’s football, there will be opinions about who is right and who is wrong.”
What Walker seems to miss here is that it wasn’t about “who’s right and who’s wrong” at all. You may have missed the incident in question.
There was no other opinion on Diaz’s missed goal: he was onside, which is the reason for the controversy.
However, Liverpool’s desire to do something significant to resolve the debacle appears to have disappeared.
As these things tend to do, it fades into the background as the game continues to flow.
It’s all good, and there’s no point in getting bogged down in the unfairness of the situation. But what if this happened again? Maybe Liverpool aren’t in the wrong, but that’s not the point.
VAR almost caused another scandal just days after the mess at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. During Burnley’s match against Chelsea the following weekend, Raheem Sterling’s questionable goal had not been fully controlled before the referee restarted the match.
Luckily the onside decision was the right one and the officials got away with it. But it won’t be long before this happens again.
As Walker says, we all like it when the decision applies to us, but we listen to his opinion when City themselves are taken one away unfairly.
