Whilst the admission came quickly, that does not make it any more useful to Manchester United or football fans in general.
Pro Ref, formerly PGMOL, have acknowledged that an officiating error was made in allowing Erling Haaland’s goal to stand in Manchester City’s 1–0 derby victory at Old Trafford. The refereeing body accepted that VAR should have recommended an on-field review because of Enzo Fernández’s involvement from an offside position.
And whilst the admission may reflect a desire for transparency, it does not repair the damage.
United will not get their point back. City will not lose two of the three they collected. The Premier League table will continue to record a City victory and a United defeat, even though the organisation responsible for refereeing the match now accepts that its officials got the decisive incident wrong.
Mistakes have always been part of football. Referees had one look at an incident, sometimes from a poor angle, and inevitably made errors. VAR was introduced specifically to reduce the number of major mistakes influencing matches.
Yet this was not an incident that escaped attention. Haaland was initially flagged offside. VAR intervened and established that he was onside, but failed adequately to consider Fernández, who attempted to play the cross while standing in an offside position. And whilst it would be easy to blame the error on technology that would be facile. The technology is just a tool to aid the decision-making of the VAR official who is a qualified referee and expected to know the laws of the game inside out.
The fact that the official in question seems not to have understood the offside law and the concept of interfering with play is concerning in itself.
The consequences could extend far beyond one September afternoon. City are expected to challenge for the Premier League title. Two additional points could eventually prove enormously significant in a race in which the margins between the leading clubs may be extremely small.
United have suffered the opposite consequence. Whatever criticism can legitimately be made of their failure to beat opponents reduced to ten men, a goalless draw would still have produced a point. Instead, they have none.
No apology can alter either calculation.
And it also shows that rebranding an organisation does not make it any more competent.
