Manchester City took the lead after Erling Haaland recovered from an early penalty miss to score, and Liverpool thought they had levelled in the 38th minute when Virgil van Dijk headed home from a corner. Van Dijk shook off close marking from R\u00faben Dias and met the delivery with a firm header that beat Gianluigi Donnarumma and nestled in the bottom corner.<\/p>\n
The on-pitch assistant had already flagged for offside, identifying Andy Robertson as the player in the build-up. The Premier League Match Centre explained Robertson was \u201cin an offside position and deemed to be making an obvious action directly in front of the goalkeeper.\u201d That explanation prompted immediate debate because Robertson was positioned to the goalkeeper\u2019s left and not directly in Donnarumma\u2019s line of sight at the moment Van Dijk made contact with the ball.<\/p>\n
Robertson was behind the deepest City defender and stood a yard from the goalkeeper. He did have to duck to avoid the flight of the ball as it passed over his head on its way into the net. The Laws of the Game are clear that not every player in an offside position is automatically interfering with play. Law 11 in the FA Handbook outlines that a player can be considered to be \u201cin active play\u201d by \u201cpreventing an opponent from playing or being able to play the ball.\u201d<\/p>\n
VAR confirmed the on-field offside flag and the goal was ruled out. Arne Slot reacted furiously on the touchline as the decision stood, shouting into his coat while Liverpool were denied an equaliser. Moments later Nico Gonz\u00e1lez extended City\u2019s lead to 2\u20130 from distance, his long-range effort diverting off Van Dijk on the cusp of half-time.<\/p>\n
The decision left observers divided. Some noted Robertson\u2019s proximity to Donnarumma as he sprawled toward the header and argued that the defender could be seen as affecting the goalkeeper\u2019s ability to play the ball. Others pointed out that Donnarumma\u2019s eyeline was not blocked and that the wording \u201cdirectly in front\u201d raised as many questions as it answered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
VAR confirmed the offside flag on Andy Robertson, denying Virgil van Dijk’s headed equaliser at 38′.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4371,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,1056],"tags":[220,299,1215],"class_list":["post-4372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-man-city","tag-andy-robertson","tag-arne-slot","tag-controversy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}