Gabriel Jesus is a big fan of VAR – but he reckons they got it wrong in ruling out his second “goal” at West Ham.
The Manchester City striker had a flying start to the season, being picked ahead of Sergio Aguero in their opening Premier League match.
And he justified Pep Guardiola’s selection by popping up at the near post to fire the Blues ahead in the first half.
He seemed to have killed the game in the second half by tapping Raheem Sterling’s cross into an empty net to make it 3-0.
But the video assistant referee reviewed the goal and decided that Sterling was fractionally offside before delivering the ball.
It was an extremely tight call – Sterling’s arm was in an offside position, but that is legal, as it is a part of the body which cannot be legitimately used to score a goal.
But some geometric measuring by the video scrutineers seemed to determine that a tiny portion of Sterling’s shoulder – which can be used to score – was also over the graphic line on the screen.
Offside is not subject to the “clear and obvious error” qualification as it is deemed to be black and white – even though this clearly was not.
But the VAR decided it was offside, so Jesus was denied, and even though City went on to win 5-0 it still galled Jesus.
He called for a speeding-up of the process as it is killing goal celebrations.
He said: “I really like VAR because it helps the referee, and it’s not easy for him. But people need to work more quickly, because sometimes when you score you cannot celebrate in the same way. If it works right, it is OK.”
And he refused to accept that the officials got the call right on his goal.
“In my opinion it was a goal, because I scored! Only the hand was offside and the hand cannot be offside as you cannot score with it. But the decision is down to VAR.”
