Jurgen Klopp has questioned why VAR was not used in last night’s clash between Liverpool and Manchester City.
The technology is not used in the League Cup until the semi-final stage, but the German tactician believes referee David Coote and his assistants seemed confused at times without the extra help.
“Haaland’s first chance, at the start of the game, was offside. You do not know? Yes it was. I say to you. That gives the game direction,” Klopp told Sky Sports (via Sports Mole).
“It was like, hit, ‘Oh my God, they’re through,’ I was offside, but no flag, and it gives you a bad feeling. He would say that if we had VAR, the referees are used to VAR, and suddenly you tell them not today. It seemed that in a couple of situations they were waiting for it, or thinking that the VAR was still left.
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“But there were a couple of offside decisions, where everyone in the stadium was convinced they were offside. We’ll probably never know because we can’t reproduce them.
But it makes sense if you play a competition and everywhere there is VAR. [Premier League]Why not, especially in a game like this. I understand in earlier rounds it’s not possible at all levels but this City-Liverpool all the technical stuff is here so why shouldn’t we use it?
It doesn’t really make sense to introduce VAR at the semi-final stage; if it wasn’t used in the previous rounds, then it shouldn’t be used at all.
But you can certainly see where Klopp is coming from – we’ve gotten so used to having technology in the Premier League and Champions League that it felt quite strange not to have it.
Sometimes it seemed the linesmen were holding the flag down and forgetting that VAR was not available to detect incorrect offside calls.
You’d be right to say there were no major decisions where the referee got it wrong, but the FA Cup holders may feel aggrieved not to have been awarded a penalty after Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain was brought down by Nathan Ake in the box.
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