Mohamed Salah liked a video on X (formerly Twitter) of Richard Keys slamming VAR’s decision to rule Luis Diaz’s goal offside during Liverpool’s controversial 2-1 loss to Tottenham on Saturday afternoon.
It looked as though Diaz had put his team 1-0 up in the first half after his side were reduced to ten men, however, on-field officials ruled that Diaz received the ball in an offside position despite the outstretched leg of Cristian Romero appearing to play him onside. VAR then failed to intervene and overturn the decision after taking a closer look at it.
The PGMOL later admitted a mistake had been made and conceded that a “significant human error” had led to Diaz’s goal being chalked off. Multiple pundits criticised the poor officiating after the game including Keys and Richard Gray, who were on broadcast duties for beIN Sport.
A video of their post-match rant was uploaded to X and was liked and then quickly unliked by Salah on his social media account.
“The question isn’t whether he is on or off. The question is why didn’t the match day centre, why didn’t Darren England and VAR take his time to look at that, and I do not buy the reason we have been given by the production team which is ‘well it keeps the game going’. Absolute nonsense.”
Gray then added: “Richard, look. It shouldn’t have taken any time. We can see by the naked eye that it is onside. Now they should be able to clarify that within thirty seconds to a minute max when it’s as straight as that, when it’s as easy as that, when it’s as easy as that. VAR should be all across that and produce these types of pictures. The Goal should have stood.”
Keys fumed: “Just put a line on it. It will prove one or another whether it is on or off. The naked eye now just isn’t good enough, you can’t run that risk.”
There was also a great deal of controversy surrounding the sending-off of Curtis Jones in the first. The Englishman caught Yves Bissouma high in the follow-through of a 50-50 but touched the ball beforehand.
Former Tottenham player Jamie Redknapp disagreed with the decision to show Jones a straight red, stating: “I don’t see that as a red card, he wasn’t endangering the player if that’s a red card we won’t have many players left on the field this season.” Spurs would go on to win the game courtesy of an own goal at the death from Joel Matip after Liverpool were reduced to nine men when Diogo Jota was sent packing for a dangerous challenge on Destiny Udogie.
