Close call for both!
EXPERT VIEW Chris Foy
THIS match will be seen as a tale of two penalty decisions. They were the major talking points and when you break it down you can absolutely see why the officials came to the decisions they did.
PENALTY ONE
CALL it a collision between Martin Odegaard and Ederson in the box as the keeper rushes out to make a tackle.
Odegaard goes to ground, onfield referee Stuart Attwell decides not to award a penalty but because there is a possibility of one, it’s automatically checked by the VAR, Jarred Gillett.
He decides that Stuart had not made a clear and obvious error and so had no reason to suggest that the referee go to the monitor.
And if you look at it again and again, you’ll see things —
Did Ederson get a touch of the ball? Did Odegaard actually stamp on the keeper?
Football, even in the age of VAR, is still about opinions, but if Jarred felt Stuart hadn’t made a clear and obvious error — and you can absolutely see why he did not — then you stick with the onfield call.
The VAR system is not there to re-referee matches.
PENALTY TWO
SO WHY did Stuart go to the monitor for the second potential penalty, the one for City involving Bernardo Silva and Granit Xhaka?
Because Jarred felt he had missed a clear foul, a pull on the shirt. That’s not normal contact — that’s a foul, a clear foul, and he felt Stuart had missed it.
Having told Stuart that, the referee was advised to go to the monitor and saw what he had missed.
So yes, the correct decision was a penalty and he rightly overturned his decision.
Had there not been a pull, and Silva had gone to ground under Xhaka’s challenge, VAR would have said there wasn’t enough evidence for Stuart’s decision to be overturned. The pull changed everything.