Pascal Gross escaped a red card against Liverpool because VAR did not consider the foul to have denied a clear goalscoring opportunity when awarding a penalty kick.
Brighton’s Pascal Gross committed the foul inside the box on Dominik Szoboszlai, leading to a penalty for Liverpool just before half-time. Mohamed Salah converted the spot-kick to put Liverpool ahead after falling behind earlier in the first half.
While some Liverpool supporters believed Gross should have received a red card, the PGMOL‘s rules shed light on why VAR did not intervene to recommend a sending-off.
The rules state that a player should be cautioned if they commit an offense against an opponent within their own penalty area that denies the opponent an obvious goalscoring opportunity and the referee awards a penalty kick, provided the offense was an attempt to play the ball or a challenge for the ball. In all other circumstances (e.g., holding, pulling, pushing, no possibility to play the ball, etc.), the offending player must be sent off.
In this particular incident involving Pascal Gross, VAR, under the guidance of Craig Pawson, did not view the situation as an obvious goalscoring opportunity.
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This decision may have been influenced by the fact that Szoboszlai was not advancing toward the goal and would have needed to regain possession of the ball to have a clear chance to score.
This incident follows the controversy from the previous week when the PGMOL issued an apology to Liverpool for a “significant human error” in their match against Tottenham. In that match, a Luis Diaz goal was wrongly disallowed for offside due to confusion between the referee and VAR.
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Jurgen Klopp, Liverpool’s manager, expressed his lack of awareness regarding the potential for a red card for Gross in the recent incident and chose to focus on the penalty decision instead. Klopp indicated that he is not interested in dwelling on such matters and is moving on from the controversy.
