Spanish judge cites gross errors by football’s video assistant referees in league games
Weighing in on the effectiveness of soccer's video review, a Span‐ ish court has deemed that VAR officials created gross errors during games last season through their partial selection of images for the referee to view.
In a recent court verdict seen by The Associated Press on Fri‐ day, a Madrid‐based judge cited two incidents from Spanish league games played last season where the images provided by the video assistant led to erro‐ neous decisions by the on‐field referee.
The verdict tossed out a law‐ suit by a former referee who had sued the Spanish soccer fed‐ eration for no longer using him and other colleagues as video assistants during the final two games during the current sea‐ son.
The first incident cited by judge Sonia López was during Real Madrid's visit to Valencia in May when Vinícius Júnior was sent off with a red card for scuffling with Valencia players after the video assistant inter‐ vened.
The judge says that the video assistant failed to show all the relevant images of the alterca‐ tion, which included Valencia players acting aggressively to‐ ward Vinícius.
Vinícius was racially abused during the match, provoking a scandal that gained worldwide attention.
The Spanish soccer federation later took the highly unusual de‐ cision to annul Vinícius' red card.
The second incident cited by the judge was from Atletico Madrid's 3‐3 draw at Espanyol also in May when the hosts were in the thick of an ultimately un‐ successful bid to avoid relega‐ tion.
The referee initial waived off a late goal by Atletico because he ruled that the ball had not fully crossed the goal‐line.
The referee overturned that decision and awarded Atletico the equalizer after he was shown an image by the video as‐ sistant.
The judge, however, said that there existed other images that the video assistant did not offer to the on‐field referee which put in doubt whether the ball fully crossed the line.
The referee who had filed the lawsuit was not involved in ei‐ ther of those two incidents.
But the judge included them to support her ruling that the Spanish soccer federation was justified in no longer employing him and other former video as‐ sistants.
The video review has been used in the Spanish league since the 2018‐2019 season.