PGMOL chairman Howard Webb has denied “serious concerns” reported by Liverpool over Virgil van Dijk’s canceled goal against Manchester City.
On Sunday afternoon, Liverpool deservedly lost 3-0 to Man City with goals from Erling Haaland, Nico Gonzalez and Jeremy Doku.
The Reds didn’t do much in the first half against Man City but improved after the break, with their only good moment coming when Van Dijk’s goal was canceled out after Haaland’s opener.
Van Dijk headed home a corner kick, but the goal was chalked off as Andy Robertson was in an offside position. However, he was not in Gianluigi Donnarumma’s line of sight when the centre-back touched the ball.
This moment could have changed the trajectory of the match, with head coach Arne Slott subsequently condemning this “obviously wrong decision”, while PGMOL had been “informed” about the club’s “serious concerns”.
Now, Webb has explained why it was “not unreasonable” to disallow Van Dijk’s header.
“As the ball moved toward Robertson, three yards from goal in the middle of the six-yard box, he made a clear action by ducking under the ball. The ball went right over his head and found the goal in half of the six-yard box where he was,” Webb said on Sky Sports’ Match Officials Mic’d Up show.
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“The referee has to make a judgment. Did that specific action affect the goalkeeper and his ability to save the ball? There’s subjectivity here.”
“They saw the action very close to the goalie and formed that opinion.
“I know that’s not a view held by everyone, but it’s not unreasonable to see why (the officials) would come to that conclusion when the player is so close to the goalkeeper, the ball is coming towards the goalkeeper, and he has to duck to avoid getting in the way.
“They have concluded that it will affect Donnarumma’s ability to dive for the ball and make saves.
“Once they make a decision on the field, VAR’s job is to look at it and decide whether the result was clearly and clearly wrong.
“Only Donnarumma really knows whether he was affected by this and we need to look at the factual evidence.”
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Slott also compared Van Dijk’s decision to John Stones conceding a goal in a similar incident against Wolves last season, but Webb explained why there was a “clear difference”.
Webb added: “There’s a clear difference here in that the ball went directly over (Wolves goalkeeper Jose) Sa’s head and not over Silva’s head.
“He’s in an offside position, but the important thing is that he stays away from the flight of the ball.
“Looking at this, it is difficult to see how Sa would be affected by Silva’s actions. If the ball had gone over Silva’s head, perhaps causing Sa to hesitate if it had hit Silva, we would have had the same result of the goal being disallowed.”
