Michael O’Neill said his Northern Ireland players were “angry and upset” after teenage debutant Callum Marshall saw a stoppage-time equaliser ruled out by VAR for a marginal decision in Friday’s 1-0 Euro 2024 qualifying defeat to Denmark.
Marshall had only been on the pitch for a few minutes when the West Ham youngster flicked on Jonny Evans’ header to find the corner of the net, cancelling out Jonas Wind’s 47th-minute strike and sparking huge celebrations amongst the 1,700 travelling fans.
But hearts sank as referee Daniel Stefanski signalled a VAR check that would last a full five minutes, with Tomasz Kwiatkowski taking an age to review the footage before determining that Evans had been fractionally offside when the free-kick was sent into the box.
“I thought it was all about ‘clear and obvious’ and the different terminology that we have in different situations,” O’Neil said. “If it takes that long to disallow a goal why would they disallow it in that situation? I don’t know whose call that is.
“The referee obviously doesn’t go to the monitor to look at it so whoever is looking at it has to take that decision. But I’m baffled that it took so long, and clearly the margin was so minimal. For me it’s not how the technology should be used.”
Jordan Thompson had sent in a free-kick from 40 yards out on the right, with Evans heading it goalwards and Marshall’s flick beating Kasper Schmeichel.
“By the time Jonny heads it Jonny is clearly onside so we’re looking pre-the delivery of the ball,” O’Neill said. “Did he gain any advantage? The referee said to me something about 30 centimetres. I don’t know where he gets that from.
I'm baffled that it took so long, and clearly the margin was so minimal. For me it's not how the technology should be used.— Michael O'Neill
“I’m not really sure where we gain an advantage. We won’t get a satisfactory explanation, I know that, so it’s done and we have to move on.”
Asked if he wanted his players to use a sense of injustice as fuel going forward, O’Neill added: “I don’t think we need it. We don’t need that to turn around our team to be ready to play on Monday night (at home to Kazakhstan).
“We’ll be playing in front of a vociferous crowd who will be proud of how we played tonight. We’re angry and we’re upset but we don’t need that.”
O’Neill was seen with a consoling arm around Marshall’s shoulder as the players went to applaud the travelling support.
“We’ve put him on because he’s got a lot of potential,” he said. “He’s come on, scored a goal and he’s had the fairytale start to his international career taken away from him.
“I put my arm around him and told him there’ll be plenty more goals. He’s a young player with massive potential but it’s heartbreaking to have that taken away from you in that type of scenario.”
For all the frustration at the end, O’Neill was proud of the way his young Northern Ireland side had handled the toughest fixture in Group H.
An injury to Craig Cathcart took the number of senior players missing to 10, with O’Neill forced to rely on inexperienced players including four teenagers.
“It was a tough game but we did very well in the first half to contain them and we managed the game well,” he said.
“I felt the second half with the goal got a bit ragged and we should have done better out of possession but our reaction to going a goal down was excellent. At that point you have to stay in the game, it would be easy here to concede again but we didn’t do that.
“We knew we could get a bit of play in the last 15-20 minutes and on the basis of the last 15 minutes we deserved to get something from the game and we feel pretty aggrieved that we didn’t.”
