Jurgen Klopp and Carlo Ancelotti shared a touchline chat in which they concurred upon the use of VAR as the two managers agreed that “this is not football!”
The conversation came at the end of the Champions League meeting in Madrid as Real Madrid won the second leg of their Round of 16 tie against Liverpool 1-0, to advance through to the last eight of the competition with a convincing 6-2 aggregate victory.
In truth, the match was effectively over as a contest following the dramatic first leg at Anfield. Despite Darwin Nunez and Mohamed Salah giving Klopp’s side a dramatic two-goal lead, doubles from Vinicius Junior and Karim Benzema, alongside an Eder Militao header – saw a stunning away victory.
Wednesday’s clash at the Santiago Bernabeu proved to be somewhat less dramatic, with Benzema’s late goal securing a deserved victory on the night for Los Blancos as Liverpool failed to offer the sufficient threat to claw back the three-goal deficit.
However, just as the game was in injury time and winding down, the match was dragged out in an unnecessary manner by another unnecessary involvement from VAR – when the referee was called over to check the VAR screen despite no protests over a handball call.
A Real Madrid effort made its way into Liverpool’s penalty area with the ball ricocheting off the leg of Reds defender Kostas Tsimikas and onto the Greek player’s arm, in an innocuous and entirely accidental incident.
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Football’s ever-changing handball rules have sparked lively debate throughout the years, with there still plenty of confusion when it comes to individual interpretation of the rules on a subject which is unlikely to ever provide a satisfactory definitive definition.
Ancelotti explained after the match, when asked what he and Klopp were discussing during the lengthy VAR-induced stoppage: "We agreed that it was not a handball, which led us to having a conversation about the penalty from Tuesday night in Manchester that was crazy, really, the penalty against Leipzig."
The Real Madrid boss added: "We both said that you have to be careful with this (the use of VAR) because this is not football, to be awarding penalties like that in a Champions League. I don't think anyone had noticed that there had been an issue, not even Guardiola had appealed that they called that penalty."
