The VAR cancels a penalty from Busquets on Borré

The VAR gave Barcelona a cable in the first half of the first leg of the quarterfinals against Eintracht Frankfurt. It was minute 39 when Santos Borré fell inside the area shot down by Busquets. In the first instance, the referee Srdjan Jovanovic signaled the maximum penalty. The Barcelona midfielder rose like an arrow to vigorously protest that he had touched the ball before contact. Meanwhile, from the VOR room they reviewed the action.

A few seconds later, they called Jovanovic up on the screen and showed him how, indeed, the ‘5’ had made contact with the ball before bringing down Santos Borré. A fact that, as Iturralde González explained at Cadena SER’s Carrusel Deportivo, is not decisive in deciding whether or not there was a maximum penalty. In other words, if Busquets’ contact with Borré is strong enough to signal a penalty, it should be called even if he had contacted the ball before.

This is how he explained it before the AS and SER referee: “Busquets after touching the ball, sweeps it… In Spain they don’t call him because there is contact. Here there has been. The other day at Real Sociedad-Espanyol , Cabrera touches the ball and then there is contact. What happened? Penalty. Touching the ball doesn’t mean anything. But for me it is not a penalty, contact is not enough. It is a 100% referee play, it is not a clear, obvious and manifest error play.”

In addition, Carrusel Deportivo discussed whether in Spain the protocol that has been carried out to correct Jovanovic’s decision is applied in the same way. In LaLiga, as long as there is contact, as Iturralde explained, the referee is not usually called to the screen, except in case of clear and manifest error. It is probable, then, that Jovanovic would not have been warned on this play and the corresponding punishment would have been upheld. Despite this, Itu sentences that the referee, in the second instance, was right, since there is not enough contact for such a punishment.