Barcelona’s Copa del Rey semi-final tie against Atletico Madrid ended in a 4-0 first leg win for Diego Simeone’s side but was also overshadowed by a controversial VAR decision.
Hansi Flick’s side were denied a goal in the second half when a strike by Pau Cubarsi was ruled out for offside. It took VAR eight minutes to make the decision which drew plenty of criticism.
The CTA have now issued a statement to explain the delay and say there was a problem with the SAOT (semi-automated offside technology),
per Mundo Deportivo.
“Regarding the play that resulted in the disallowed goal for FC Barcelon , in assessing the play, and following protocol, the VAR team analyzed it using the semi-automatic offside system SAOT. During this analysis, it was detected that the system generated a failure in the player modeling through the skeletons, upon detecting a situation with a high density of players.
“After attempting to have the system recalibrate the modeling, and after verifying that this was not possible, following the established procedure, the VAR team proceeded to manually draw offside lines to make the final and correct decision. For this reason, and exceptionally, the review process of the play took longer than usual and made it impossible to provide the replay to the television production, as the SAOT system could not be used.”
That explanation is unlikely to go down well with Barcelona who will feel the goal would have given them a way back into the match. The lengthy delay also killed all momentum, with players forced to wait a long time before resuming play.
What a shambles.
