"There were other VAR images that raised doubts about whether or not the ball had completely entered the goal." A Madrid court has concluded that the video arbitration system clearly harmed Espanyol during the match against Atlético de Madrid, in which the referees awarded a ghost goal by Antoine Griezmann. The judge concludes that the VAR omitted key images of the play. If that goal had been valid, the match ended 3-3, Espanyol would have added the necessary points to achieve salvation.
The ruling of this Madrid court rejects the case in which Xavier Estrada denounced the Spanish Football Federation for dismissing him and six other VAR referees starting from the last two days of last season.
The plaintiffs considered that it was a retaliation because they had initiated legal actions against the entity, however, the Justice accepts as good the explanations offered by the Federation and maintains that the appointment of the plaintiffs to the VAR does not imply "an absolute right and unlimited to be appointed for successive days".
The ruling says that these retaliations are not proven because when the plaintiffs initiated legal actions they continued arbitrating. But they point to some referee errors as the reasons for taking these measures to "avoid possible suspicions and suspicions about the lack of integrity of the competition."
Justice points out two errors, in particular, that were treated very differently by the Competition Committee. Regarding the first, the expulsion of Vinicius in Mestalla, the ruling ensures that the assistant only showed the images in which the Real Madrid player's aggression can be seen, but omitted "the rest of the previous images." In that case, the decision, for the first time in the history of Spanish football, was annulled by the Competition Committee as a result of "the biased images provided by the VAR assistant."
It happens that Competition did not go into assessing the second error, which happened on the same day, in which the ruling of the Madrid court was stopped, which was Griezmann's ghost goal against Espanyol and which led to the relegation of the Catalan team. The VAR referee offered some images, but according to the ruling there were others "that raised doubts about whether or not the ball had completely entered the goal."
Subsequently, Espanyol challenged the match that ended in a draw (3-3) upon understanding that the VAR awarded a goal to the rojiblancos (Griezmann's 0-2) without the image used being conclusive to determine if the ball crossed the line of goal.
