VAR in the Manchester derby: Pro Ref admits error of judgement as Rooney calls it 'baffling'

Michael Oliver blew his whistle, the assistant's flag went up, and the ball was already in the Manchester City net. The Etihad held its breath as the big screen flashed the familiar words: VAR review. Erling Haaland's goal was disallowed on the field, then awarded minutes later. VAR Matt Donohue judged Haaland onside and ruled that Enzo Fernandez, who lunged to head the ball from an offside position, had not touched it. The Manchester derby swung to the home side on that very goal.

The rest of the story only surfaced after the final whistle. Pro Ref, the body that manages refereeing in English football, admitted the VAR team made an "error of judgement" by not sending referee Michael Oliver to the monitor to review whether Fernandez was interfering with play. According to Pro Ref, United defender Lisandro Martinez and goalkeeper Senne Lammens were both impacted by the attempt to play the ball.

I watched this match close to midnight Hamburg time, and by the final minute I still was not certain whether I had watched a goal or an argument.

Context: two layers of one law

To understand why one decision provoked such fury, split the offside law into two layers. The first is geometry: where a player stands relative to the last defender at the moment the ball leaves the passer's foot. That layer can be measured and drawn, and VAR exists to handle it. The second is interference: whether a player in an offside position affects his opponents. That layer belongs to judgement, and that is where everything breaks.

In this incident, the VAR team focused on a narrow question, did Fernandez touch the ball, and answered no. That answer is correct as data. But it skips the harder part: does a player lunging to head the ball from an offside position, right in front of defenders and a goalkeeper, force them to react differently?

Remember the founding principle of VAR: it intervenes only for a "clear and obvious error". That is a threshold, not a switch. The threshold was designed to protect the flow of the game. But whenever an incident lands in the grey zone, the argument becomes about where the threshold sits, and that argument runs longer than the ball was ever in play.

Dermot Gallagher, the former referee, said on Sky Sports News' Ref Watch that the officials "lost focus": "I think they've focused on one element of that law, and that focus has diverted them away from the real thing."

Reaction from inside and outside

Wayne Rooney said on BBC's Match of the Day 2: "I'm just so sick of this VAR, I think it's horrendous. It takes all the emotion off the game, the energy the game's played with, and to not see that and recognise Fernandez is in an offside position... Anyone who's played the game at any level understands that and knows that he's in an offside position... To get it so wrong, it's just baffling."

Note what Rooney is not complaining about: the technology itself. He is complaining that the technology was used to answer the wrong question.

Jay Bothroyd, the former Coventry and Cardiff forward, went further, demanding that officials be reprimanded and calling for ex-players to be involved in VAR decision-making: "Players make mistakes, right? And they get reprimanded. Officials need to do the same thing. There needs to be some kind of punishment for officials as well, because saying I'm sorry is just not good enough. Michael Carrick's under pressure now. He's under pressure now, so he could lose his job because of them making a bad decision."

Gallagher answered in the voice of the profession: "Well, it's in house, isn't it? I have to tell you, when I was a referee, and referees now, we actually beat ourselves up if we get something wrong. We are the worst enemies for ourselves. This incident is really unfortunate, but that's it. You can't change that. You can only change the present and the future. And you've got to learn from it."

Peter Schmeichel was less measured. The former Manchester United goalkeeper called for VAR to be scrapped, describing it as an annoyance. Pro Ref has contacted Manchester United over the incident.

The blind spot is expectation, not cameras

Across this whole debate, almost nobody objects to VAR existing to fix clear errors. Everyone is fighting over which errors count as clear. And the tighter the standard is drawn, the more layers of judgement get created.

Picture Senne Lammens. An opponent lunges in front of him, in an offside position, moving toward the ball. He must choose: come out, or hold his ground. Either choice is a reaction to a player who should not have been there. That is why Rooney and Bothroyd say the same thing: anyone who has played the game at any level can see it.

The irony is that because the interference clause is subjective, VAR here cannot repair an error. It only moves the error from the referee on the pitch to referees in a closed room. A wrong call used to belong to one person and end within seconds. Now it belongs to a process, stretches over minutes, and is still being dissected days later.

A football move is a continuous current: a player runs, a defender turns, a goalkeeper sets his feet. VAR forces that current to stop into separate frames, each answering a small question. Did Fernandez touch the ball? No. Was Haaland offside? No. Two correct answers, added together, producing a conclusion millions of viewers see as wrong. When you stand far enough away, every heatmap becomes a painting, but the painting is not the match.

World Cup 2026 taught me that data can be enjoyed like a beautiful match. That only holds when we accept that data does not tell the whole story. In this derby, the VAR team tried to tell the whole story, and the story broke.

The proposal to put ex-players in the VAR room sounds reasonable, but it only swaps one subjectivity for another. A former striker will say that is interference. A former defender will say not enough to interfere. What is missing is not someone who understands football, but a definition of interference tight enough to use.

An empty stadium is a variable no model anticipates. Here, the comparable variable is expectation. When expectation of VAR is pushed to never wrong, every time it errs, or merely appears to err, is treated as a scandal. The technology is not broken. The expectation is.

What remains

Gallagher got one thing right: you can only change the present and the future. But to change anything, you first have to admit there are questions in football that cameras cannot answer, however many angles you have. Probability is not for believing. It is for sleeping with.

People look at the numbers sheet. I see breathing.