Real Madrid completed a miraculous comeback against Bayern Munich in the second leg of their Champions League semifinal, reaching the European title match against Borussia Dortmund by a 4-3 aggregate score.
Joselu’s late brace off the bench snatched victory from the jaws of defeat as the German side collapsed at the Bernabeu, appearing to be through on an Alphonso Davies thunderbolt but failing to hang on in a 2-1 defeat.
However, the result didn’t come without enormous controversy, as Bayern Munich had a late equalising goal by Matthijs de Ligt deep in stoppage time ruled out for offside. The assistant referee flagged for offside in the buildup to rule out the goal, and while replays appeared to show the decision was incorrect, it was not reviewed by VAR.
The Sporting News explains exactly what happened and why the goal was chalked off, and not reviewed by the offside technology.
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With Real Madrid up 2-1 and the match deep into nine minutes of stoppage time, Bayern Munich threw everything forward hoping for a last-gasp equaliser to send the match to extra-time.
A ball from deep was delivered by Bayern Munich towards the top of the penalty area, where Noussair Mazraoui battled for the ball with a defender. With the ball bobbling around, Bayern substitute Thomas Muller pounced, nodding it laterally to defender Matthijs de Ligt who was playing up as a striker as a desperation play from manager Thomas Tuchel.
De Ligt managed to turn his defender and get on the ball, and rifled a shot past a confused Andriy Lunin who stood still almost as if he had stopped playing. That’s because he had indeed stopped playing, because the whistle had blown prior to De Ligt’s shot.
The official had blown his whistle, reacting to the assistant referee who had raised his flag for an offside offence on Mazraoui in the buildup. However, replays in the immediate aftermath showed that Mazraoui was quite tight with Real Madrid defender Antonio Rudiger, and may have actually been onside — De Ligt was leaning just off, but he did not receive the ball from deep, Mazraoui did, and he was just behind Rudiger.
No worry, we have semi-automated offside technology to correct the decision, which came into play earlier in the match, seeing a Vinicius Jr goal count after initially being disallowed. Except, it wasn’t…why?
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With the incident happening at the very end of the match between Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, broadcasters didn’t have ample time to inform fans about what happened, and thus viewers will have been left confused about why the Matthijs de Ligt goal wasn’t given after being initially ruled out for offside.
In fact, the incident wasn’t even reviewed by VAR, because technically, it never happened. Because the referee blew his whistle before the end of the play, the shot cannot be reviewed by VAR as he stopped play before the shot occurred. That is why Real Madrid goalkeeper Andriy Lunin was standing still as De Ligt put the ball in the net, because he had reacted to the whistle.
Thus, the play was not reviewable by VAR. Ever since the introduction of VAR, assistant referees have been instructed to leave their flag down for an extra few beats to allow play to continue, such that if their decision is incorrect, they do not stop a promising attack with the wrong call.
However, that instruction was not heeded here by either the assistant referee or the head official. Instead, the AR raised his flag immediately, and the head official blew his whistle in response, ending play early. While the decision would normally have been reviewable had the official not stopped play early, because he blew the play dead, it could not be reviewed.
It was a sharp departure from a refereeing mantra that has been in place for years, ever since VAR was introduced. While television broadcasters repeatedly complain about officials letting play continue, in their mind, too long before blowing dead for offside, this exact situation is what they are hoping to prevent by doing so.
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