Lineker: A terrible decision. Vieira: Referee’s mistake! Liverpool’s controversial penalty stirs passions

The penalty awarded by the referee in the Crystal Palace-Liverpool match will long be a subject of dispute among football fans and experts. Was it, or was it not, correctly whistled?

The match between home side Crystal Palace and visiting Liverpool was slowly coming to an end. Klopp’s charges were slowly marching towards victory, but they could not be sure of it. After all, it was only a one-goal game at that point, 2-1. Anything can happen in the last seconds of a game, as West Ham could confirm, who lost at Old Trafford with a goal in the last ten seconds of stoppage time.

Liverpool’s Portuguese striker Diogo Jota receives a pass behind the defence in one of their attacks. There’s no need to mention the skill of this player. That he is skilful in activities other than shooting will probably be more talked about after his act, unfortunately.

He moved the ball too far away from himself with his kick and when he saw that he couldn’t catch it, he considered other options. He checked the goalkeeper’s position with a glance and headed it straight towards him. He was on his knees at that moment, moving forward towards Jota.

Although he wanted to avoid the collision and put his hands up to indicate that he was no longer taking action, the collision occurred. Jota fell to the ground and awaited the referee’s verdict. Kevin Friend immediately after the incident indicated that he could kick the goalkeeper away from goal. But then his colleague at the video intervened.

The head referee then listened to the VAR instructions for some time, then went to look at the monitor, where he spent the next two minutes or so. He eventually awarded the penalty despite his initial refusal, Fabinho converted it and Liverpool were able to finish the rest of the game in peace with a 3-1 scoreline.

But how will the Premier League management explain to Crystal Palace fans, and other teams, that VAR is consistent and makes decisions based on a clearly defined yardstick? An example that consistent decision making is absent? Ederson’s tackle on Fraser from the Manchester City and Newcastle game. You could say it was a clear penalty, despite that VAR let it stand and no penalty kick was taken. If it wasn’t played in this case, it shouldn’t have been played at the Crystal Palace stadium under any circumstances.

What reactions did the penalty whistle elicit for Liverpool?

” The referees have made mistakes in games before, but this one was huge. Jota did it cleverly and the referees were naive.”

In a tweet, English football legend Gary Lineker shared his opinion that a penalty shouldn’t be given for such a tackle once in a million years.

Former player and current TV pundit Jamie Redknapp was of the same opinion.

“This was simply not a penalty, you could clearly see that Jota deliberately ran into the goalkeeper. The referee should have stood by his original verdict,” he told Sky Sports.

Crystal Palace players, coaches and fans will never get their hopes of an equaliser back. However, it would be good to see a significant improvement in the performance of referees in the islands.

Source: Sky Sports, Premier Sport