Latest news with #VAR-based
News18
19-05-2025
- Sport
- News18
‘Looks A Bit Guilty': Roy Keane Questions Onana's Judgment After VAR Drama Vs Chelsea
Last Updated: Manchester United's Cameroon footballer was involved in a VAR-based controversy that unravelled during their Premier League loss to Chelsea. Manchester United star Andre Onana is facing stern question marks following the VAR controversy that broke out during his club's Premier League defeat against Chelsea. As United suffered a 0-1 loss at Stamford Bridge, commentators and experts criticised Onana's decision to charge out at Tyrique George. The incident saw the match referee, Chris Kavanagh, initially calling it a foul and handing United a penalty. But an intervention from VAR official Craig Pawson later sent Kavanagh for a review on the pitchside monitor. Following a brief review, Kavanagh overturned his original call. The Premier League later stated that Onana's act. #CHEMUN – 61' VAR OVERTURNVAR checked the referee's call of penalty for the challenge by Onana on George and recommended an on-field review – with Onana deemed to have played the ball. The referee overturned the original decision and play restarted with a drop ball. — Premier League Match Centre (@PLMatchCentre) May 16, 2025 'VAR checked the referee's call of penalty for the challenge by Onana on George and recommended an on-field review, with Onana deemed to have played the ball. The referee overturned the original decision and play restarted with a drop ball," the Premier League Match Centre wrote on Twitter. United's icon Keane spoke on the VAR controversy after Onana's foul, saying the footballer could've been a 'little bit smarter" in his approach. 'If he had just knocked it a bit wider and fallen into the goalkeeper, but, of course, he gets a touch on the ball and it's the right decision. But I think I could have been a little bit smarter," Keane told Sky Sports. Redknapp, the former Liverpool midfielder, said inexperience may have brought about the error from United's young Cameroon footballer. 'It was difficult. He's not a striker. He's played his career as a young academy player, as a wide player. All of a sudden, he's playing against three experienced centre-backs trying to run the line. It was a tough night for him," Redknapp said. 'It wasn't ever going to be easy, but when you're making your full debut, you want to play in your best position, but you don't care, you just want to be out there. But the other thing I would say about that one, I don't know what Onana's doing. What is he doing? Just stay on your goal!" First Published: May 17, 2025, 16:36 IST
The Guardian
16-04-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Rice finds antidote to Madrid's magic and provides glimpse of his ultimate potential
Where is your magic now? As the night wore on at an increasingly sullen Bernabéu, as the latest keepers of the Real Madrid shirt tried and failed to crank their way up through the emotional gears, this felt a bit like watching a conjuring act gone wrong. Pick a card. Any card. No. Not that one. Wait. Keep your eyes on the ball. The glass. Hang on. Such is the voodoo around Real Madrid, the white magic stuff, it had been necessary to process quite a lot of this chat in the buildup. Had Arsenal won too well at the Emirates? Was a three goal advantage further proof of their naivety? Perhaps not. By the time Gabriel Martinelli went skittering through on goal at the death to complete Arsenal's hugely deserved 2-1 victory here the crowd had at least offered up an obliging glimpse of what lies beneath the magic, a cut to the bone of this mythical footballing beast. The answer, it turns out, is a lot of empty plastic seats. That curtain has now been swished back. And yes, it turns out the emperor isn't wearing any trousers after all. It felt significant that it should be Arsenal conclusively outplaying Real Madrid, led by brilliant performances from Bukayo Saka and Declan Rice. Even more so for a team that has been repeatedly and unfairly accused of not quite being there, of being a little fey, built on hot air and slogans. For Mikel Arteta's team a Champions League semi-final is a standalone achievement in itself, a sign of the right kind of progress. This is how sport is meant to work. Teams are built, slowly sometimes. This might just be the making of this one. In isolation this game was a tale of Saka and two dinks. The first was a truly abysmal missed penalty, awarded with 11 minutes gone after a confusing VAR-based fudge. Saka stepped up to take it with a slightly alarming sense of rakishness, then produced a stubbed panenka, dinked straight at Thibaut Courtois as he dived, Courtois who is vast, with arms like the sails of a windmill. There was a sense of Bond-style drama about this. You've literally got Real Madrid right there, tied to a chair. So, yes, why not bring on the overly complex revolving blade death-scheme. Is this really the best option here? Put the shark tank away. Forget about the room full of deadly snakes. You don't get another chance with these guys. Except, it turns out sometimes you do. The game was still 0-0 when Saka scored on 65 minutes to make it 4-0 on aggregate. This was a beautiful thing, all craft and patience with a single killer thrust. Best of all it was made by Saka and Martin Ødegaard doing that thing they do on the right side, fluttering around one another like a pair of butterflies in a summer embrace, the pass-and-move love affair that was missing from this team as the title challenge died in mid-season. Rice stepped in as Ødegaard fed the ball across, allowing him to creep inside, shadowed by a run from Saka behind the defence. Mikel Merino produced the key prompt, finding Saka's run with a perfect pass, the angle and weight on the ball demanding he produce that second dink, a delightful little flicked finish over Courtois. It was in its own way a perfectly understated show of sporting will, and of strength too. Anyone can miss a penalty. What you do afterwards matters. And Saka was sensational here, beating David Alaba repeatedly with that same little step inside, passing and holding the ball, leading from the flank. Inside him Rice was sensationally good once again, and good when it mattered, while the air was still crackling with possibilities at the start. Rice is an endearingly unusual shape, with a long torso, short legs, broad shoulders, the build of a very tall centaur, source perhaps of his remarkable running power. Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion With an hour gone he still hadn't misplaced a pass. Mainly he just ran, and blocked and covered and led his team out of difficult holes, running right at this game from the start. These two games have given a glimpse of his ultimate levels as an outstanding all-round midfield leader. The main thing for Arsenal here wasn't so much that they beat this Real Madrid team, but they beat the ghosts too, some of them their own. The Real Madrid plan is always the same. That plan is: we will be Real Madrid. And you will allow us to be Madrid. It is the footballing version of Authority Bias. People basically want to be told what to do. Act like you're in control and suddenly you are. The experience, it is often said, begins with the buses in the streets, the feeling of being a sacrificial goat at someone else's coronation. Madrid was a cold, damp, gusty place before kick off, the streets shiny with April rain. There were cheers and shouts. The crowd surged. Madrid's social media feed did its best through the day, like an angsty host talking too loudly to cover the party silences. Ninety minutes at the Bernabéu are very long, the club admin had warned. Well, yes. Must have felt like old boy. Madrid are a weirdly configured team right now. At their best they flow like smoke all over the pitch. This version feels fractured and two-tier, built around surely the most self-absorbed elite footballer ever to make it to this level, with an attack for whom defensive duties seem like a curiosity, a fish out of water comedy setup, like a reality TV show where Jacob Rees-Mogg becomes a binman for a day. Arteta had looked small and a little frantic out there at the start, all in black like some evangelical curate pounding his fists at the sky. But victory here is an outstanding achievement, and vindication for the ultimate systems man, the team with a midfielder in attack, pilloried for failing to take the final steps, for shrinking under the harshest of lights. There is still time for that. But not here and not tonight.
The Guardian
26-01-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Bryan Mbeumo's retaken penalty helps earn Brentford win at Crystal Palace
For Brentford, there was a measure of relief. It's probably fair to say that the run of one win in nine games on which they went into this weekend was not representative of how they'd played but still, it's as well to stifle as early as possible any thought that they were going through a midwinter slump similar to last season's. Survival may not quite be mathematically assured but breaking the 30-point mark with 15 games remaining makes it almost certain they will be in the Premier League next season. 'The mentality and character of the team was brilliant,' said a clearly delighted Thomas Frank. 'We played the conditions right and we defended brilliantly. We decided to go a bit longer with the goal-kicks and in all tricky situations to go behind them with the pace we have.' After a slow start, the game was rather better than the conditions. It was an afternoon of truly filthy weather, a raw morning yielding to heavy rain, a blustery breeze, and skies of unremitting grey. It was a day to be grateful for modern drainage, the pitch remaining slick and green throughout. With Brentford in a blancmange pink-and-aubergine away kit that evoked the once-aspirational bathroom in a seedy bedsit in which terrible things have happened from an 80s crime drama, the overall effect was of almost artistic bleakness, a sort of Croydon Noir. At the heart of all true noir is the sense of the world as an implacable bureaucratic machine that inevitably crushes all human endeavour. And so it was that the game turned on a five-minute period of VAR-based drama midway through the second half; while Palace fans booed, the decisions taken were all, ultimately, probably correct, even if they wouldn't necessarily have been given in a pre-VAR age. 'Both teams neutralised each other and it looked like the team that made the first mistake would lose it,' said Oliver Glasner. As the hosts' manager pointed out, whatever VAR's involvement, the penalty really stemmed from a string of Palace errors. It began with Marc Guéhi smacking a clearance into Will Hughes, who thrust up his hands to protect his face. Perhaps that would anyway have eventually been given as a penalty, but Maxence Lacroix then caught the shin of Nathan Collins as he jumped for the bouncing ball. The referee Tony Harrington gave the penalty, and the VAR official Darren England confirmed his decision. Bryan Mbeumo's kick, though, hit the post and, as Guéhi cleared, Palace seemed to have got away with it. A VAR check, though, showed that Guéhi had encroached before the kick was taken and so Mbeumo got another chance, the modern innovation of VAR and the 1937 innovation of the D at the top of the penalty area combining to undo Palace. (Whether Norwegian clubs will vote to abolish the D remains as yet unclear). The oddity is that, as no other player had touched the ball, Mbeumo wouldn't have been able to play it again, and so Guéhi had no need to clear it. Second time around, Mbeumo let Dean Henderson dive to his right and dinked the penalty the other way to maintain his 100% Premier League record, Yoane Wissa running away in celebration while Mbeumo was still in his run-up. One soon became two. With his high forehead, incipient widow's peak, pallor and general air of jittery spindliness, there is something of the alchemist about Mikkel Damsgaard, forever on the verge of some earth-shattering discovery and yet never entirely sure he hasn't attracted the unwanted attentions of the church authorities. He had been a frustrated figure in the first half, but with 10 minutes of the second remaining, his skittering magic on the right created room for a cross that Kevin Schade headed past Henderson. Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion Palace, who had been on a run of one defeat in 11 league games, are in a similar position to Brentford: almost certainly safe and not quite inventive enough to qualify for Europe. Jean-Philippe Mateta, back to his best after a post-Olympics slump, almost added his fifth in as many games early on as Eberechi Eze flicked on Hughes's low pass, Mark Flekken making an excellent save, but the promise that implied was never delivered upon. Everything of creative note that Palace did went through Eze and after he was tripped 12 minutes into the second half, his free-kick clipped Sepp van den Berg in the wall and hit the base of the post. It was Eze, inevitably, who created their goal, his deep cross finding Daniel Muñoz, whose volley across goal was turned in by the 19-year-old substitute Romain Esse, making his debut after a £14.5m move from Millwall. That led to some late Palace pressure but other than a free-kick Eze pinged over, Brentford were secure enough. For them at least the clouds have parted.
