The Real Madrid coach, Carlo Ancelotti, fueled the controversy after his team’s defeat against Barça at the Camp Nou by “doubting” the adjusted offside decreed by the VAR in the goal disallowed by Marco Asensio in the 80th minute. However, a detailed study published this Tuesday reaffirms the decision of the technology, a conclusion that would settle the debate on the placement of the lines to mark the illegal position, recurring in recent hours in the Madrid environment.
The Archivo VAR web portal, dedicated to analyzing the most controversial and adjusted arbitration decisions using scientific methods, calculating the distances from the field with precision, has determined that Asensio was 30 centimeters ahead of Koundé, who was the player from the Blaugrana team that was furthest behind.
The analysis carried out by Nacho Tellado, a registered architect, even affirms that the conclusive image of the VAR is wrong. The VOR room, with Soto Grado in command, chooses a frame after the ball has contacted the boot of Dani Carvajal, who is Asensio’s assistant in the disallowed goal. This failure causes the distance shown by the video arbitration to be less than the real one between Asensio and Koundé.
The Madrid club, through a video on its television channel, complained bitterly about the “unfortunate refereeing” by De Burgos Bengoetxea that “prevented Real Madrid from winning at the Camp Nou with an incessant trickle of errors always in the same direction which culminated in the two serious decisions that settled the match”, a push from Gavi to Ceballos without the ball in play, which they consider aggression, and the aforementioned goal disallowed by Asensio.
To defend the legality of the Majorcan goal, which would have meant a momentary 2-1 for Ancelotti’s men, they maintain that a frame should have been chosen after the one used by the VAR, “when the ball has left the footballer’s boot” and as is done, according to Madrid, with the “semi-automatic offside that was used in the World Cup and now in this Champions League.” However, the official regulations of the IFAB, where the soccer rules are collected, denies the reasoning of the Madrid entity.
The regulations make it clear that “a player is in an offside position at the moment the ball is played or touched by a teammate” and to avoid language ambiguities, they clarify that as a reference “the first point of contact of the ‘play’ or ‘touch’ of the ball”, just at the moment the pass is produced, in this case from Carvajal to Asensio.
