This week has seen enough litigation. Football’s news cycle has been dominated by Chelsea’s punishment (or non-punishment, depending on your persuasion) for historic financial breaches, a point of law immediately overshadowed by the decision to declare Morocco, not Senegal, the rightful winners of the Africa Cup of Nations, two months after the final. Frankly, it has been exhausting.
So no, this is not about relitigating the result of Manchester United’s 2-2 draw at Bournemouth — and to be fair to Michael Carrick, in a moment when a manager is typically expected to make a solely one-eyed complaint, the interim head coach’s comments, on close reading, are far more analytical than the reality of a passionate situation usually dictates.
As is typical, and in what probably adds to any frustration, Carrick spoke to several outlets post-match — to the written media, to Match of the Day, to Sky Sports. The source of his exasperation was probably explained most clearly to the latter.
“We found the goal, should’ve had another penalty,” Carrick told Sky Sports. “You get one, you must get the other. It’s pretty much identical, two-hand grab — so either way, he’s got one wrong. To give one and not give the other… I just can’t get my head around it. It’s crazy. Because of that, they go down the other end, they score and then it’s chaos after that.”
He did accept that Bournemouth’s second goal, and Harry Maguire’s subsequent red card, for an extremely similar offence to the one he felt had been committed by Adrien Truffert fell into the same category.
“I haven’t got too much of a problem,” Carrick added. “If he’s passed him and he’s in on goal, I can understand that decision, so I’m not going to say we deserve everything. But it shouldn’t have happened because we should’ve had another penalty and the game would’ve been totally different.”
What Carrick did omit, however, was a separate challenge from Maguire on Evanilson in the first half that, if given, also would have totally changed the complexion of the match. It’s worth a quick recap.
The first major decision, after 24 minutes, was Maguire’s shove on Evanilson. The Brazilian striker got goalside of the Manchester United centre-back, was nudged in the back as he was about to shoot, and went down. Referee Stuart Attwell gave no penalty.
Maguire nudges Evanilson in the first half
On the hour mark, Matheus Cunha cut inside Bournemouth full-back Alex Jimenez, who pulled the forward back by grabbing his shirt, and though Cunha did throw himself to the ground, his momentum had been impeded. Attwell gave a penalty, which Bruno Fernandes scored.
Alex Jimenez holds back Matheus Cunha
Now, fast forward another six minutes. Amad, dribbling into the area from the opposite side to the Cunha foul, is grabbed by Truffert. He goes down in very similar circumstances — if anything, Truffert’s challenge was more forceful. Attwell does not give a penalty.
Bournemouth break upfield, the ball finds its way to Ryan Christie, and the Scotland international neatly passes it into the net to equalise. Manchester United are apoplectic.
With the visitors having taken the lead once more, there is time for a final major decision, on the 78th minute, when Evanilson is challenged by Maguire again — who, despite outstretching his hand, does not seem to actually grab the striker’s shirt. Attwell gives the penalty, and Eli Junior Kroupi scores. The match finishes 2-2.
Of the major decisions made by Attwell, all four remain with the referee’s original verdict. The video assistant referee does not intervene. All four appeared to be penalties.
Manchester United made a formal complaint to PGMOL, the body that oversees Premier League referees, with club officials making it known that they were furious and felt there were inconsistencies in the officiating. They also could not understand the amount of stoppage time awarded, adding to the feeling they had been wronged on multiple occasions this season.
While clubs do selectively remember the decisions that go against them — amusingly, Manchester United’s official highlights do not show the first shove on Evanilson but do show Amad getting pulled back, while Bournemouth’s shows the first shove on Evanilson, but do not show Amad getting pulled back — fundamentally, Carrick and Manchester United do have a point when it comes to inconsistency.
These decisions, viewed as a set, do not bear a logical relation.
Amad’s appeal, for example, is arguably the most egregious — the grab on his shirt is more clear, impactful, and forceful than those on Evanilson or Cunha, and yet is not penalised. With pulling a player back often considered a ‘soft’ penalty, it is fair to ask if Attwell was subconsciously guided by having awarded one for the same offence just minutes before.
So why did the VAR choose not to overrule Attwell? No explanation has been given — except for the vague notion that this was not a “clear and obvious error”. Other sports have ways to overcome this information gap — for the television viewer at least.
In rugby union, for example, where the referee’s interactions with the television match officials are mic’d up, there was a good example of an apparent inconsistency in the most recent World Cup final in 2023. The captains of both sides, Sam Cane of New Zealand and Siya Kolisi of South Africa, both carried out very similar-looking high tackles. Cane was given a red card and sent off for the remainder of the game, while Kolisi only saw yellow, and was sin-binned for just 10 minutes.
But because the audio between the referee and the TMO was broadcast, several small differences in force and body position were highlighted, helping justify why one tackle was deemed less dangerous than the other. While supporters could disagree with the interpretation, the supposed inconsistency was explained.
The discussions of the officials in rugby union’s World Cup final could be heard (Getty Images)
That helps — but football seems unwilling to follow suit. Why? Surely, it’s as simple as stop play, explain the reasoning, job done? But the sport has another central imperative, whose existence is also justifiable — to want the referee’s initial decision to play a role, primarily to increase the speed and flow of a match.
In recent seasons, this tenet is becoming more and more entrenched — this summer, referees from across Europe’s top-five leagues will discuss how they can return to a point of only using VARs for obvious mistakes, not ‘microscopic errors’. The Premier League is proud that it has the lowest VAR intervention rate in Europe.
Add in another issue — that the issue of players impeding each other has always been a grey area, with technical offences likely to go unpenalised at almost every set piece — and the VAR becomes even less likely to get involved.
So this is the central difficulty. The sport is caught between two imperatives — to want the referee’s decision to play its part, and to want absolute consistency. These are not compatible.
It may be possible in an objective game, such as cricket, where a batter is either in or out, but not in football, where the rules are more subjective. It has a lawbook but the complexity of football’s interpretative framework means that the same challenge may always be at risk of being judged differently.
When even the five supposed independent experts on PGMOL’s ‘key match incidents panel’ typically disagree, voting whether decisions should have been overturned based on a majority of two to three, the impasse becomes clear.
Rugby union, as the Kolisi-Cane case makes clear, has opted to prioritise communication over perfection, but the unique socio-corporate landscape that football inhabits — the scale of the money involved, the size and vehemence of fanbases, the unique pressure on managers — means that, should a decision go against a club, nothing but perfection is good enough.
This is a league where a club hired Mark Clattenburg as a ‘refereeing consultant’, where owners threaten legal action over penalty decisions, and where fans would uncover the hometown of a referee’s mother’s dog-sitter in a search for bias. It’s a league where fans pay thousands of pounds for a season ticket and not much less to watch it on television, and so on we go, litigating, because perfection is what we paid for, and this is what we all signed up for. Isn’t it?
Football’s ecosystem cannot accept a world with the VAR system or a world without it. It is an essential dissonance and the sport has run out of ways to solve it.