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 was ruled out for offside against Robert Lewandowski.
In the 52nd minute, Cubarsí sent the ball into the back of the net after it deflected off Lewandowski's boot. 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 Technology (SAOT) 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 this offside..." complained a very indignant Hansi Flick in the press conference.
The Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) has 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 a second touch of the ball by Lewandowski which – in the referees' opinion – put Cubarsí offside when he received the ball. Since the technology failed and they were unable to display its usual decals, they had to resort – according to the CTA's explanation – to the offside lines that were previously drawn.
The CTA (Technical Committee of Referees) 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 the modeling of the players through the skeletons, upon detecting a situation with a high density of players, took longer than usual and made it impossible to send the replay to the television production (as the SAOT system could not operate)."