Rio Ferdinand wants to see the PGMOL make two significant changes following the controversy surrounding VAR in Liverpool’s defeat at Tottenham.
Liverpool lost 2-1 in north London last Saturday, but the game was marred by a huge blunder from the Video Assistant Referees when they failed to award Luis Diaz a goal when the score was 0-0.
The linesman incorrectly called Diaz as offside but VAR failed to overturn the decision, a mistake PGMOL later owned up to.
On Tuesday evening, the referees’ governing body released the audio from the incident and it has transpired that while they had spotted the onside, it was a communication error that lead to Simon Hooper restarting the game instead of giving the goal.
The audio makes for compelling listening and there have long been calls for referees’ conversations to be made heard live during the games.
The Manchester United legend certainly thinks that should be the case, saying on TNT Sports: ‘Well this is high level stuff, this is the Premier League. Beamed around the world. Huge investment in our game.
‘In this type of situation, I’m looking at who is taking ownership of that situation. Who is the boss who is leading that there? It looks like they’re all in there and no one knows who is taking ownership and that is the problem.
‘I would love to hear this conversation, this dialogue all the time. I would love this standard of communication to be open all the time so we can hear it. So there’s transparency and clarity.
‘At the moment people think what’s going on here is there someone working behind the scenes here, so if you get that transparency you take away a lot of that element.
‘I just think you need someone to get hold of it, and go – you know what there I am. There’s no bass in that room, zero bass.’
Ferdinand also called for the introduction of ‘automated offsides’ which have been used to good effect in the Champions League and major international tournaments for the last year.
The Premier League supposedly rejected bringing it in over the summer, a mistake the former England defender wants rectified.
He added: ‘In the World Cup, technology took over in this type of situation. It wasn’t left to human eye or human error.
‘Then there was a vote from the Premier League to say the technology isn’t ready yet, we don’t want it. If they had let this come in we wouldn’t be having this conversation.’
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