2024 MLS Match Day 32 Referee Discussion

@incognitoind addresses this pretty well. I mean, it did go into full make-believe land. But that's just because they got it wrong. The idea that they got to make-believe land by traverseing subjectiveland is wrong, though, too.

If this contact had occurred when the player in question was in an offside position, it's 100% a clear offside call (and would be more consquential than most interfering with an opponent offside calls). So the problem isn't that they went looking for something ticky tack. It's that they saw something obvious (the pick and contact off the ball) and then totally forgot the basics and entire underlining reason why they would need (or not need) to care about the rather obvious thing they were seeing. The fact that the review took awhile has more to do with inefficiency than a heightened level of subjectivity.

This was a mistake--a wrong intervention and a wrong outcome--that occurred because three officials forgot the basic principle of offside at the wrong moment. In that regard, it's one of those really bad mistakes that likely will have short-term consequences for the officials. But it's also about those three officials and not about the VAR system itself (unless the argument is that the existence of VAR allowed the officials to make such an error, but that ship sailed a long long time ago).

 

Just around 4 minutes. Slightly under if you want to count the review process itself. Slightly over if you want to go goal-to-restart.

I mean, I can't believe I'm in a position of sort of defending what happened here. Because I'm not. This was a horrendous error. But I think it's worth understanding how something like this happens. Once the alleged infraction is identified here and the VAR team gets tunnel vision, then Touchan is at the monitor and it's a lot of showing him everything and walking him through it, while Rivero makes his argument.

So you've got the initial mistake in the booth where they identify the non-existent offside and then the mistake at the monitor where Touchan isn't aware enough to see the problem or inquisitive enough to ask the right questions. The only way anyone was "coming to their senses" once they went down this path was if Touchan was better at the monitor or if Balciunas (or Rivero) suddenly realzed they were wrong while trying to explain to Touchan they were right.

And none of this is meant to be an excuse. I think both Touchan and Rivero (and Balciunas, for that matter) likely need to sit for this. Just because this was an honest mistake doesn't mean it's one that should be countenanced by PRO, because it speaks to a fundamental breakdown in the VOR and a lack of necessary awareness during the OFR by the referee.

 

I think the idea that Benteke committed an offside offence is the sort of looking-for-a-problem subjectivity alluded to above.