Howard Webb, the chief referee, has spoken on the VAR fiasco that resulted in Luis Diaz’s goal against Tottenham being wrongfully overturned.
The on-field officials in Liverpool’s highly-controversial loss to Spurs disallowed Diaz’s genuine goal for offside, and the VAR was unable to overturn referee Simon Hooper’s first judgement due to a miscommunication.
The humiliating mistake was attributed to “significant human error” by the refereeing organisation PGMOL, who also made audio recordings between Hooper, VAR Darren England, and AVAR Dan Cook to demonstrate how it happened.
Joel Matip’s own goal in injury time sealed Liverpool’s 2-1 defeat at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, marking the Reds’ first loss since 2023–24.
However, with Jurgen Klopp’s team also receiving two contentious red cards, Diaz’s disallowed goal coming when the game was still scoreless, and the refereeing dominating conversation in the days after the game, Liverpool pressed for an investigation.
Webb discussed Diaz’s choice of match officials: On Tuesday, he stated that “nobody is more disappointed” with the error than the authorities on Mic’d Up, a show that broadcasts the exchanges between the referee and VAR officials.
We took the uncommon decision of making the audio from this incident public shortly after it occurred, he continued. We intended to demonstrate to everyone what became immediately clear to us: that there had been a substantial human mistake and lapse in focus. We’re all dissatisfied that the VAR system didn’t intervene to correct the obvious mistake we had seen on the pitch with the goal’s disallowance.
“Nobody is more disappointed than the officials themselves. They take pride in their work, they want to be a positive influence on the game, but in this situation it wasn’t the case. Of course without VAR that disallowed goal would still have been a disallowed goal but VAR exists to step in when we make a wrong decision on the field. So of course we’re disappointed. Our job then was to try to find out what happened and what we can do to prevent that sort of thing happening again in the future.”
After reviewing the incident, Webb determined the areas where the VAR procedure needed to be improved in order to prevent more failures of this nature.
He said: “One of the things that has been brought into sharp focus is the need to reiterate some of those communication protocols that are really valuable in VAR, to prevent this type of thing happening. We want the on-field referee to communicate to the VAR what the on-field decision is very clearly and VAR to go back to referee and acknowledge they have heard that properly. The VAR goes through the process of checking the situation and giving clear direction to the replay operator to get the right angles, speaking to the assistant VAR as they are going through that as well so that the assistant VAR can be another check and balance.
“Before communicating to the field, speaking to the AVAR what their intended direction of travel is going to be, and not just saying ‘check complete’ – because what are you check completing? Say ‘check complete, goal confirmed’. In this case, ‘check complete, offside confirmed’. That is then another trigger to the on-field officials that they are going in the wrong direction. We have put a lot of steps in place to ensure the error we saw in that important game doesn’t happen again.”
When questioned about why the referee was unable to halt the match after it had resumed, Webb responded, “They realised that the laws of the game, established by FIFA and the IFAB, doesn’t allow it.
“There’s obviously a process in place that sits in the laws of the game… And it doesn’t allow you to go back in those circumstances.”
Jurgen Klopp, the manager of Liverpool, said that he thought a rematch would be a fair resolution following the unusual mix-up, but then recanted his remarks, claiming the media had misconstrued them. He said: “If I made the impression that I was still in [Saturday’s] game, we are not.
“We are over it. We are not children. That is it. From a focus point of view there was not a problem.”