The possibility of a repeat of Liverpool’s Premier League match against Tottenham Hotspur from last weekend may have increased due to Howard Webb’s approval of the scenario while working in the United States.
In March 2017, Webb was appointed head of the MLS’s VAR operations, a position he held until the summer, when he left to take up the role of chief refereeing officer for the PMOL in England.
During his stay in the country, Webb was compelled to apologise and reschedule a league match because of a costly mistake that occurred during the entire 90 minutes of play. In fact, despite Pittsburgh Riverhounds being denied what should have been a goal, a USL Championship game between Miami FC and Pittsburgh Riverhounds in October 2021 ended scoreless.
After a Miami free-kick resulted in one of their players sending the ball back to the custodian, who was unable to handle the ball and allowed it to roll into the net, officials decided to award Pittsburgh a goal. According to the rules, if a ball crosses the line directly from a free kick, the other team receives a corner; however, this set-piece was first sent short to a second player before getting past the custodian and should have stood.
Bob Lilley, the coach of Pittsburgh, was upset because the referees misapplied the rule governing free-kick situations. He declared, “It’s obvious that [the officials] said it was the first pass, but it wasn’t. “We saw it, and [Miami coach] Paul Dalglish (Kenny’s son) saw it, and even he declared it to be a goal. It was an excellent objective.
After a review of this error, the game was resumed at a later time from the 67th minute, one minute after the own goal happened, with Pittsburgh leading 1-0.
It remains to be seen whether Liverpool are afforded the same luxury, though Klopp is not holding out much hope this will be made possible. Speaking at his pre-match press conference ahead of tonight’s Europa League clash with Royale Union Saint-Gilloise, the Reds’ boss said: “The argument against that will probably be if you open that gate then everybody will ask for it. I think the situation is that unprecedented that – it didn’t happen before, I’m 56 years old and I’m 50 years in football and I’m absolutely used to, even if I don’t always deal well with it, wrong decisions, difficult decisions – but something like that as far as I can remember has never happened. That’s why I think the replay would be the right thing.
A replay, in my opinion, would be the appropriate course of action if it happened again. Alternatively, the referee might convene both managers and apologise, saying, “We made a mistake, but we can fix it. That Liverpool score a goal and we start from there.” Being that we gave up two minutes after scoring a regular goal surely adds some extra specialness to this particular game. How everything is interconnected; if the other goal had been considered, we would have started in the middle of the pitch rather than where the game had begun. That’s a start. That’s how I see it.