Rio Ferdinand has echoed Jurgen Klopp’s complaints about how long VAR took to make the decision to disallow what would have been a match-winning goal from Taki Minamino.
The incident in question was reviewed after Sadio Mane played a header to the Japanese international, with it being discovered that the Senegalese’s hand had struck the ball before finding his teammate.
“I agree with Klopp, though, the time it takes, you can see it in slow-mo easily, but we’re sitting here for four/five minutes,” Rio spoke on BT Sports, as reported in the Echo. “Crazy. But it was a handball.”
It’s rather annoying to keep hearing that some of the decisions made by the technology are technically correct once analysed, following such forensic ferocity more befitting of a crime scene.
By focusing on the incident in isolation, we can absolutely see the ball striking Mane’s hand – make no mistake.
But the decision once again fails to take into account the lack of clarity around the error, not to mention the apparent accidental nature of the handball.
We understand that VAR is there to overturn errors that are ‘clear and obvious’, but how on earth was it so clear or obvious if those working the technology took so long to reach an actual conclusion on the matter?
At the very least, it was fortunate that the moment occurred in a throwaway game, though we’re still immensely baffled about VAR’s decision-making.