No it was crossed in his direction by Gapko I think and intercepted by Toti glancing off his head then through to Salah. No idea what the latest rules are, they seem to change weekly.
Its only “not” offside if the defending player purposely plays it in a certain direction. Any type of deflection, tackle that sends the ball flying or something like that shall not cancel an offside call.
There is only one thing that works for refereeing football. And that is to set up a very clear standard that cannot be misinterpreted and then follow it to the letter, all the time without exception.
These guys, Mike Dean and co, have never done that. They are reactionary. Make-up calls. They bend the rules when they think it shows that they “understand” the game and stuff like that.
That will just — always — eventually lead to disasters. Something is called a handball in one game and not the other — despite the presence of VAR and the ability to review plays from endless directions. How do you explain that to a fan? It is impossible, and these guys do not even remotely understand just how frustrating it is for fans.
They just need to clean house at the top. It’s the only way. It is not hard. It just must be done properly. You must have consistency at this level. You just cannot expect to avoid disasterous situations if you ‘play it by ear’, not only on the effing pitch, but in a VAR room.
There is also way to much politics in the reffing world of football. It’s suicidal to have this system where there are a few singular persons at the top that selects the people to reff games. The fact that Mike Dean is still around, we all know it’s only about some friendship he has at whatever place. He is a nice bloke. Whatever. FFS put some kind of independent board in place to evaluate the refs.
This is also a — huuuuge — reason for why we never have any elite refs in Europe from the PL. If you are a good young ref in English football, it’s extremely hard to make a career and rise in the ranks.
