Erling Haaland might just be the perfect goal scorer, but his goal in Manchester City's 1-0 win against Manchester United on Sunday proved that perfection is something that will always be out of reach for VAR (Video Assistant Referee), despite it being there to give us exactly that.
Remember when VAR was introduced into the Premier League in 2019 after a successful trial run at the 2018 FIFA World Cup? It was adopted by the most high-profile league in the world to bring clarity and certainty to the biggest decisions, and put an end to games being decided by the mistakes of officials on the pitch.
No more calamitous offside calls or wrongly issued red cards; no more players getting away with terrible challenges unseen by on-field officials; and, mercifully, no more managers complaining about refereeing mistakes after a defeat.
Controversy would be consigned to history. It was all going to be perfect.
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That has always been the perception of VAR -- the ultimate safety net of a review process that would bring swift on-field justice. But because video technology is in the hands of human operators, perfection is in the eye of the beholder and subjectivity pollutes every decision-making process.
So when you have a scenario such as in the Manchester derby, when Haaland's goal was initially ruled out for offside by assistant referee Stuart Burt, the role of the VAR is to check that the decision is correct. In this case, they had to answer three questions:
1. Was Haaland offside?
2. Was there a foul in the build up to the goal?
3. Were any other players in an offside position?
All of these questions must be answered before the assistant referee's decision is cleared, but because everybody expects perfection, the VAR -- on this occasion Matthew Donohue and his assistant Blake Antrobus -- had to make a subjective decision on No. 2 and No. 3 after semi-automated technology showed that Haaland was actually onside.
There is no foul in the buildup, so question No. 2 is answered quickly, but No. 3 is the one which drags the VAR team into trouble. The officials decide that City's Enzo Fernández is neither challenging for the ball, nor obstructing United defender Lisandro MartÃnez's path to it, despite the midfielder throwing himself at Josko Gvardiol's cross in an attempt to get his head on it.
And this incident highlights the perennial flaw of VAR. When it comes to a subjective decision, officials will interpret things differently. It can never be a perfect system -- not until AI puts them all out of a job and gets every decision correct in a millisecond.
But here's the irony of it all: In a system that can never be perfect because of the human element, the officials are attempting to make it just that by overthinking and overanalyzing what should be straightforward decisions.
Had Donohue and Antrobus correctly applied the Laws of the Game (Offside is Law 11) they would have quickly asserted that Fernández was attempting to play the ball and was also blocking MartÃnez's path to it. So he was offside on two counts of the Law. Yet, inexplicably, in their pursuit of making the perfect decision while sitting at the video screen, their attempt to be 100% correct ended with them being 100% wrong.
Perfection was staring the VAR team in the face, written in black-and-white in the Laws of the Game. But they chose to bring their own interpretation and delivered what may go down as the worst VAR mistake the Premier League has ever seen.
Howard Webb, the 2010 World Cup final referee and head of Pro Ref, the new name for the referees' body, said last month that he wanted his VAR officials to meet a high bar for intervention in on-field decisions and only get involved when there was an obvious error by the referee and his assistants. But his instruction does not cater for VAR officials second-guessing themselves and being influenced by concerns over what the reaction will be if they get it wrong. In an attempt to get it right, they miss the obvious, as happened at Old Trafford.
Pro Ref issued a statement three hours after the final whistle on Sunday to admit that Haaland's goal was awarded in "error," but it was too late to change the outcome of the game. Pro Ref got it right in the end, but perfection only arrived when United manager Michael Carrick and his players were back home, nursing a collective sense of injustice.
Haaland's goal could turn out to be significant. United have now equaled their worst start to a Premier League season by taking just four points from four games, so Carrick will start to come under pressure to save his job if the sequence continues. By gaining an additional two points from a game that looked set to head for a draw -- City had been reduced to 10 players on 25 minutes following a red card to Phil Foden -- City's fortuitous victory could be decisive in the title race if they end up winning it by a point or two.
And if Haaland (who is currently on 115) ends his City career with 261 league goals, eclipsing Alan Shearer's Premier League record of 260, will there be an asterisk next to his name because of a goal that should not have counted at Old Trafford?
All of the above are possible outcomes, and anything but perfect. But they would all be a direct consequence of the VAR call during the 199th Manchester derby.
So much for perfection.
