Losc is furious after its defeat in Ligue 1 against Luis Enrique’s PSG on Sunday evening. Because before Randal Kolo Muani’s final goal in added time (1-3, 90th + 2), Lille were pushing to equalize… and they thought they had done it. We were playing the 82nd minute of play when on a free kick in the middle, the Portuguese full-back Tiago Santos took advantage of a header from Benjamin André to completely revive his team.
But this 2-2 situation initially validated by Benoît Bastien was refused after an intervention by the video referee, for an offside of a few centimeters by Tiago Santos, very quickly called into question by the northern side. “Look carefully at the images, after Benjamin’s deflection, the ball falls back on Meunier and the goal is perfectly valid”, points out Bruno Genesio.
“Were the referees watching film?”
A game-changing element, since the offside indicator shown on the DAZN broadcaster is made at the moment of Benjamin André’s header. “Mr. Bastien, who is not responsible for it, confirmed to me that the fact that Thomas Meunier touched the ball put Tiago Santos back into play,” says Lille president Olivier Létang. This postulate presented, he is extremely sharp against the decision taken by the referees in charge of the VAR.
” The championship is already truncated. We put millions of euros on the table to have the video, to be sure to make the right decisions… It’s the big frustration of the evening, to say the least because we’re at 2-2 at that point in the match. There are eight minutes left, we’re pushing so we don’t know what could have happened. I don’t know if it’s a technology problem. There are people who are responsible for that. When afterwards we see clearly, cleanly and precisely that there is no offside, yes I’m furious. »
For his part, faced with this possible bad indicator that led to the final decision of video refereeing, Bruno Genesio was ironic in front of the media on Sunday evening: “If we put in a VAR that doesn’t do its job, it’s useless. On the bus, what were the referees doing, were they watching something else, a film?”