Barcelona were left reeling after VAR took eight minutes to rule out a potential equalizer in the Copa del Rey semi-final against Atletico Madrid.
Barcelona’s goal was canceled after an eight-minute wait (Image: Oscar DEL POZO/AFP via Getty Images)
Spain’s refereeing committee was forced to issue a statement explaining why it took eight minutes to rule out Barcelona’s controversial goal against Atletico Madrid for offside. Barça were trailing 4-0 at half-time in the first leg of the Copa del Rey semi-final in Madrid on Thursday.
After the break, Hansi Flick’s side quickly got out of the blocks and threatened to close the gap. Pau Kubalsi calmly took advantage of a loose ball inside the penalty area and scored the goal, making it 4-1.
That was until officials in the VAR room realized that Robert Lewandowski, who last touched the ball for Barcelona before Kvarsi, might be in an offside position. Checks continued, and although at first glance the decision seemed tough, no one expected the wait to be this long.
Players in both sets resumed their warm-up and continued passing the ball until the VAR results were determined. In the end, they ruled that Lewandowski was slightly offside, but not due to semi-automatic offside technique (SOAT).
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Due to the “high density” of players in the box, VAR officials had to draw the line themselves as a crowd of 69,200 waited. After the decision was finally confirmed, Barça were furious, with the visitors’ momentum clearly interrupted by the eight-minute wait, and the second half ended in stagnation.
The CTA (Spanish Referee Technical Committee) has released a statement clarifying this debacle. “The play that resulted in the canceled goal of FC Barcelona was analyzed by the VAR team using the semi-automated offside system SAOT, in accordance with the play evaluation and protocols. During this analysis, it was discovered that the system had a fault in the player modeling via the skeleton when it detected a situation in which players were crowded together,” the statement reads.
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Lines had to be drawn manually (Image: Movistar)
“After attempting to force the system to readjust its modeling and following established procedures to ensure that this was not possible, the VAR team manually drew the offside line to make the final correct decision. Because of this, and exceptionally, the review process for the play took longer than usual and the unavailability of the SAOT system made it impossible to provide replays for television production.”
Barça also lost Eric Garcia to a controversial red card in the closing stages. After the match, Flick said the canceled goal was a “chaos” as the competition holders had a mountain to climb in the second leg on March 3.
Hansi Flick called the VAR controversy a “chaos” (Image: Oscar J. Barroso/Europa Press via Getty Images)
“What should I say?” Flick raged. “We start with a yellow card. Usually the first action, a foul on (Alejandro) Balde, it’s a yellow card, (sure). And then everything may be different after that. But he invited them to play like this, so it’s completely different.”
“(As for the canceled goal) Well, for me it’s a mess. They have to wait seven minutes, oh come on. Did they find something in those seven minutes? Okay. If you look at the situation, it was obvious it wasn’t offside. Maybe they saw something different. And tell us, that’s not communication. It’s very bad here.”
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