Serbian lower league referee overturns decision to disallow goal thanks to fan's phone
A referee from the Serbian lower leagues has gone viral after he overturned his decision to disallow a goal, thanks to a fan's 'homemade' VAR, on his phone, as you can see in the video below.
The referee had originally decided to disallow a goal after the team in blue had headed home a goal from a free kick, but the player had looked offside.
After many complaints from the team, and no doubt the fans, the official went over to the fans to see what all the fuss was about.
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One of the crowd had clearly been recording the goal and it was clear that the goal wasn't in fact offside, leading to incredible scenes from the players.
There's definitely some questions about whether or not the goal should have been allowed because of a video on someone's phone, it doesn't exactly seem like it's regulation.
"VAR is now available in the Google Play store," might be one of the best comments on a video we've read...
— S.S. (@kvard1) September 15, 2022
VAR gets a hell of a bad rap for making some poor decisions, or at least the referees that use it get a lot of abuse for using it pretty terribly.
Recently there's been some really poor rulings from VAR, or the officials going over to screens because the VAR officials told them to, with Juventus fans particularly aggrieved from last weekend.
Arkadiusz Milik was sent off after picking up a second yellow card for celebrating his injury time winner against Salernitana on Sunday night, after Juve had been 2-0 down.
However the goal was then disallowed, with Milik's red card standing, because Leonardo Bonucci was shown to be offside, with Juve fans questioning if the defender was even interfering in play.
They were left even more angry when further, quite obtainable, shots showed that Andrea Candreva was keeping everyone onside by quite some distance.
In the Premier League there's been a fair share of bad decisions made, thanks to the system, with several coming in same weekend recently.
West Ham's disallowed goal against Chelsea, which would have earned David Moyes side a hard earned point, and maybe sped up Thomas Tuchel's sacking, didn't go down well at all.
The same weekend, Newcastle United also had a goal disallowed, against Crystal Palace, which wound Alan Shearer up a lot on Match of the Day.
"Minimum interference, maximum benefit, was what we were told when VAR was brought in," the Premier League legend moaned.
"...They should be told to stay out of it the VAR officials."
Ryan Sidle