Football fans are up in arms after LaLiga’s controversial decision to award a goal to Atletico Madrid during their match against Espanyol on February 28th. The team’s second goal, scored by Antoine Griezmann, was given following a VAR check, but TV images struggled to determine whether the whole ball had indeed crossed the line.
Many fans took to social media to express their outrage, calling out the decision as biased. LaLiga is the only major league in Europe which does not use goal line technology, which has only added fuel to the fire.
Atletico’s victory was not the end of the controversy that evening, with the club going on to win the match 3-3. LaLiga was quick to accept that it had made a mistake in the instance of Vinicius Jr, who was sent off during the match against Valencia. The Competition Committee wrote that the VAR referee’s action was not framed in a “human error”, revealing that the image sent to the referee was “totally partial, biased and determinant of the error of the referee in the assessment of occurred, and with it, the unjust expulsion of the player, turning the victim into an aggressor”.