Manchester derby VAR stood down: a hole in the offside law, not just human error

When the offside flag went up at the Etihad, I thought the Manchester derby had ended with an honest whistle. Then the VAR team stepped in, reversed the decision, and Erling Haaland's goal was allowed to stand. Manchester City beat Manchester United 1-0. A week later, the refereeing body admitted the VAR team had been wrong. VAR Matt Donohue and assistant VAR Blake Antrobus were removed from duty until at least after the international break. The decision was made by Howard Webb, the chief refereeing officer, together with the management team. The interesting part is not the goal. It is the silence between the two decisions — where a system that looked sealed shut revealed exactly the hole nobody wanted to look at directly. A Manchester derby is the kind of match where every mistake sits under a magnifying glass. Packed stands, dozens of cameras, and every decision capable of becoming a headline for a week. That is not an environment for referees to err in, yet it is precisely the environment in which errors surface fastest. The offside law — Law 11 in the IFAB framework — is not only about position. It is about influence. A player standing in an offside position is still penalised if he interferes with an opponent, if he affects the goalkeeper's or a defender's ability to play the ball. This is the wording that line-drawing technology cannot resolve: a machine can determine where a foot is, but not whether a player exerted influence. That still depends on a human reading the situation. According to what has been released, the VAR team examined the position of the scorer but did not account for the impact of a teammate in an offside position. That is a multi-player offside scenario — two players inside the offside zone, one of whom may be influencing the goalkeeper or a defender. This is exactly the type of situation where VAR is most error-prone, because the judgement of influence is subjective and takes longer to resolve than a simple line-drawing check. To grasp the complexity, remember that a simple offside needs one line and one frame. An interfering offside requires the referee to answer three consecutive questions: was the player in an offside position, did he take part in the play, and did he alter the opponent's behaviour. The third question has no mechanical answer. It depends on reading intent, and intent is something football has never measured with a machine. Haaland's goal came in a match where City had more of the ball and United sat deeper, waiting to counter. That turned every high ball into the box into a golden chance, and it also meant every contest involved multiple players — exactly the condition for a multi-player offside to arise. What caught my attention was not the error itself, but its structure. This error has two layers. The first is the assistant referee's on-field decision. The second is the VAR team's reversal. The mistake in the second layer is far more serious, because VAR was created to fix mistakes in the first. When both layers fail together, the safety net becomes holes. I once was confident enough to think pressing was invincible — right at the moment the opponent read out its fatal flaw. VAR has been treated with a similar faith: a tool believed to eliminate human error. But a tool does not judge. People judge; the tool only supplies images. And when a situation falls into the grey zone — multi-player offside, subjective influence — the tool hands it right back to the one place it cannot resolve: the referee's head. In this specific case there are two possibilities. One, the VAR team focused only on the scorer's position, saw his foot was legal, and ignored the teammate behind him. Two, the VAR team did consider that teammate but wrongly judged that he exerted no influence. Both are errors, but the second is harder to fix with process, because it lies in judgement, not in technique. There is something suspicious in the way the incident was reported. Some reports named a player who is not on the books of either Manchester club. That detail is almost certainly a transcription error, and it is itself a signal: even the reporting of a refereeing error can err. I raise this not to defend anyone, but to note that when a system believed to be precise collapses, the way it is retold tends to warp along with it. More importantly: this is not the kind of error that can be wiped away by buying more expensive technology. Multi-player offside is a problem that even semi-automated offside systems only half solve. They determine position better, but not intent. Semi-automation answers the question of who is where, not who exerts influence. The hardest part remains beyond the reach of machines. A meta only truly lives when a reckless figure dares to burn down the whole analytical structure. Here, what got burned is the belief that technology has finished solving the offside problem. It never finished solving it. It only moved the burden from the assistant referee's legs to the eyes of someone sitting in front of a screen. There is a paradox here. The more technology and the more frames, the higher the expectations, and the more harshly each remaining error is scrutinised. An assistant referee a decade ago could err and nobody would remember. A VAR team today can err once and lose a job slot. Football has changed how responsibility is distributed: it grants technology the power to adjudicate, then, when technology fails, it punishes the people standing behind the technology. There is another reading I am obliged to raise, because it is my own blind spot. Standing down two officials immediately may be not only discipline, but a communications move. In a heavily watched derby, the refereeing body faces pressure to react fast. Admitting error and striking the guilty names is the cheapest way to cool public opinion. When I get burned, I do not hunt the arsonist. I go find a new fire — that is how people in football survive. But if this is mostly a communications move, it does not solve the root cause. The root sits in the fact that the judgement of influence in the offside law remains vague, and that vagueness is pushed toward people sitting in front of a screen under a few tense minutes. Standing down two people does not clarify that vagueness. At the moment I was left behind by colleagues, I learned to read people faster than to read tactics. These two officials were left alone inside a structure they did not control. They erred, but they erred inside a gap the law creates. Individual and systemic responsibility cannot be separated here, and striking only two names is how the system protects itself from the bigger question. I also wonder whether leagues deliberately preserve that vagueness. A clear law invites backlash when it fails. A vague law always leaves room to say the judgement was reasonable in that context. Vagueness, from a cold angle, is a shield. Of course, I could be wrong. Perhaps the refereeing body simply did its job: err, and be judged. Not every disciplinary move is theatre. But the timing — right before the international break, when public opinion burns hottest — makes me suspect the speed of reaction here was decided by outside pressure more than by internal process. The international break will pass, and these two will be reintroduced in low-profile fixtures first, then gradually in bigger ones. That is how the system heals itself: a pause, a retry, a moment that looks forgotten. But I will keep an eye on something else. Whether, after this shock, the refereeing body publishes any new guidance on how to judge influence in multi-player offside situations. If it does, the incident is a real step forward. If it does not, it is only a pause to let opinion cool down. I saw pressing before everyone — and then watched it die on the biggest stage. I will also watch whether VAR, after this blow, dies or comes back to life in a different form. Football has passed through the phase of believing technology would erase controversy. It is entering the phase of learning to live with a newer, more complex controversy. The question is no longer how to avoid error, but how to be open and consistent when error happens. That is something an administrative sanction cannot buy.