Why was Luis Diaz ruled offside? Misunderstanding between VAR and referee led to ‘significant human error’ that saw goal ruled out

Luis Diaz’s goal was wrongly given as offside due to a misunderstanding between VAR and the on-field referee.

The Reds winger saw his strike ruled out for offside during Liverpool’s 2-1 defeat to Tottenham on Saturday evening. 

Diaz thought he had opened the scoring for his side after slotting into the bottom corner following a through ball from Mohamed Salah. 

However, he was adjudged to have been in an offside position, with images showing that the Colombian was in fact, onside. 

This caused a huge controversy, with the PGMOL releasing a statement confirming the error. 

And now further details have been revealed over why the wrong decision was made…

Diaz was ruled offside due to a misunderstanding between VAR and the referee. 

Following the events at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, ESPN’s Dale Johnson revealed exactly what happened between the officials that led them to the wrong decision. 

After the assistant flagged for offside on Diaz, referee Hooper disallowed the goal.

But in the VAR room at Stockley Park, Darren England thought that Hooper had in fact awarded the goal on-field. 

Therefore, England believed that he was checking the VAR footage to see if Diaz was onside to then allow the goal. 

After seeing that the winger was clearly onside, he quickly reported back to the on-field referee saying ‘check complete’.

However, Hooper took the ‘check complete’ as the go-ahead to maintain his on-field decision that Diaz was offside. 

Therefore, this meant the goal remained disallowed and was not overturned. 

And the game then restarted, with rules stating once that game has got back underway, a decision cannot be changed.

The PGMOL released a statement post-match and described the events as a ‘significant human error’. 

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