It took almost a full day, but the referees eventually came up with an explanation for what happened at the end of Salernitana-Juventus, when a late game-winner by Arkadiusz Milik was waived off following a VAR review due to an offside by Leonardo Bonucci.
Pictures quickly started to emerge on social media suggesting that Antonio Candreva, who had lingered near the corner flag, was actually the last man for the Granata and not the defender closest to the Bianconeri captain.
As the referees’ association explained, those images weren’t at the disposal of the officials at the time. They came from a tactical camera used to tally statistics and not evaluate offsides or by TVs in general due to their low resolution, La Repubblica reports.
Therefore, without such an angle, the VAR assistant couldn’t have noticed Candreva, drawing an erroneous line, with the decision leading to a scuffle between Juventus and Salernitana players. Moreover, the offside rule was interpreted strictly considering Bonucci didn’t touch the ball nor interfered with the goalie. Arkadiusz Milik got his second yellow card for celebrating by taking off his jersey, while Juan Cuadrado and Federico Fazio saw red for repeatedly pushing each other.
There’s no chance the game gets re-played since such mistakes are considered human and not technical by IFAB. Serie A will be among the first leagues to introduce the semi-automatic offside, reducing stoppages to make calls and nullifying errors. It will be tested offline throughout the season.
Since the introduction of VAR, the Bianconeri have had the most corrections against them, 44, and the worst balance between favorable and unfavorable decisions, -21, the outlet remarks. Plus, they were at the wrong end of the worst blunder in the history of the instrument.
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