The referees' explanations for the disallowed goal in Cubarsí
The semi-automatic offside technology has not worked.
BarcelonaReferee Juan Martínez Munuera took more than six minutes to disallow a goal by Pau Cubarsí, following a VAR review (where Pablo González Fuertes was in charge), shortly after the start of the second half of the match between Atlético de Madrid and Barça. The goal had initially been ruled offside against Robert Lewandowski.
In the 52nd minute, Cubarsi sent the ball into the back of the net after it deflected off Lewandowski. The referee initially awarded the goal, making it 4-1, but at the VAR's urging, the play was reviewed for over six minutes, until after the 58th minute. The wait was so long—and unusual—that the players from both teams even began warming up. The decision greatly angered the Barcelona players, who couldn't understand the offside call. It was striking that the broadcast didn't use the usual Semi-Automatic Offside Referee (SAOT) technology to confirm the Polish player's position; instead, they drew the lines used before the system's implementation. "I don't understand how they could have spent almost seven minutes analyzing that offside..." Hansi Flick complained angrily in the press conference. "It's a disgrace," said Rafa Yuste, the Barça president during the election process, in an interview on Catalunya Ràdio this Friday. "It's adding insult to injury. Nothing is innocent. That's why we must fight against everything and everyone," wrote Joan Laporta on the X network.
The CTA's explanations
The Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) issued a statement explaining the situation while the match was underway. The player decals on the SAOT (Video Assistant Referee) system malfunctioned. They had been trying to get it working, focusing on Lewandowski's last touch of the ball, which—in the referees' opinion—left Cubarsí offside when he received the ball. Since the technology failed and they couldn't display its usual decals, they had to resort—according to the CTA's explanation—to the offside lines that were drawn beforehand.
The CTA explained it in a press release published by several media outlets: "Regarding the disallowed goal for FC Barcelona, in assessing the play, and following protocol, the VAR team analyzed it using the semi-automatic offside system SAOT. A failure in modeling the players through the skeletons, upon detecting a situation with a high density of players, caused the process to take longer than usual, making it impossible to send the replay to the television production (as the SAOT system could not operate)."