Or, as we see 10-15 times a season, ref’s are completely ok with letting keepers maim attackers.
If you understand how VAR is used in incidents like these, and fuck me how can we still be misunderstanding that after this long, the fact it did not overturn the decision tells us that the ref knows the contact happened as the VAR pictures showed it to. The issue is he simply thinks keepers are allowed to do that.
IF the ref’s view was the contact was with his torso and the VAR showed a kick, then that is an objective discrepancy that it can then tell the ref he should review on the monitor. it CANNOT be used to just tell him that VAR think he made the wrong decisions and should give himself another look on the monitor to rethink it.
Presumably there is a level of contact the ref would view as red card worthy. Probably contact with the head. Turns out that whatever the arbitrary line the ref thinks is consistent with what the images showed happened.
