Premier League’s two VAR systems under scrutiny after Haaland winner | OneFootball

The Premier League’s use of VAR faces renewed scrutiny after Erling Haaland’s winner for Manchester City at Manchester United was wrongly allowed, with ProRef acknowledging an error and promising a review.

According to The Athletic, a key concern is that officials on the pitch and in the VAR hub rely on two separate technology partners.

At Old Trafford, referee Michael Oliver initially disallowed the goal for offside. VAR Matt Donohue overturned it, judging Patrick Dorgu played Haaland on, but Enzo Fernandez’s position in front of Lisandro Martinez was not considered. Carrick described the decision as worrying.

ProRef later said VAR failed to recognise the likely impact of Fernandez’s position and should have sent Oliver to an on-field review. It contacted United to acknowledge an error of judgement and said the incident will be reviewed.

The league split its technology after a tender, with Genius Sports operating semi-automated offside and Hawk-Eye supplying goal-line technology and the replay operator beside VAR.

A Genius Sports specialist sits in a separate room at Stockley Park and communicates by radio. The split can be swift for simple offsides, but slower and, in former referee Graham Scott’s view, needlessly clunky when calls are tight.

A move to a single supplier appears unlikely before current deals expire, though it could be revisited once a partnership ends. The league is an outlier compared with FIFA and UEFA, who use Hawk-Eye alone. It also lacks Adidas’s connected ball, as Puma supplies its match ball and Adidas holds the patent.

Source: NY Times

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