Aston Villa centre-back Tyrone Mings took to Twitter after his club’s defeat to Manchester City to have his say on the first goal of the match, labelled the ruling which allowed the strike to stand “nonsense”.
An enthralling game remained 0-0 until the final quarter of an hour, when Mings’ hesitancy on the ball allowed Rodri to tee up Bernardo Silva, who scored from range - but the Spanish midfielder had been stood in a position which would usually be deemed well offside.
Despite that, he was allowed to challenge Mings and then be involved in play, as PMGOL explained, as Mings’ initial and deliberate attempt to control the ball meant Rodri was not purposely gaining an advantage from his offside position.
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Villa manager Dean Smith was incensed that the goal stood and was sent-off by referee Jon Moss, and Mings says he had no clue of the law’s existence.
“Never even heard of that rule, just let players stand offside, then run back & tackle you?” he tweeted.
“In hindsight I should’ve cleared it, 100%, but didn’t even know that was the case. Nonsense.”
Ilkay Gundogan went on to net a late penalty to double City’s lead and send them back to the top of the Premier League table, albeit briefly.
But it was the game’s first goal at a late stage which so incensed Villa, and affected the outcome of the match.
To add to the confusion, a similar incident took place on the same evening in Italy – with an offside this time given against the player becoming involved from an offside position in the Super Cup match between Juventus and Napoli.
Juve won that game 2-0, with Cristiano Ronaldo scoring the first goal to become the all-time record goalscorer in the history of men’s football.
