In a potential admission of guilt, football governing body, UEFA, have stood down the VAR operator from the Paris Saint-Germain vs Newcastle Champions League game, after one of the worst decisions in living memory.
With only a couple of minutes of injury time to play, Ousmane Dembele fired in a shot at close range to Tino Livramento, the ball hitting his chest before bouncing up and hitting his hand.
There was simply no way it was intentional from the Newcastle man and nor could he get out of the way of the trajectory of the ball.
"It's absolutely never a penalty… at this level it's a disgrace" ?@allysbears and @jjenas8 have a strongly opinionated discussion around the awarding of the penalty which cost Newcastle the win…@laura_woodsy | #UCL pic.twitter.com/Da8dMe6dCc
— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) November 28, 2023
Intriguingly, there had been a similar incident earlier in the game where the ball had bounced up from Lewis Miley’s thigh and hit his arm, but nothing had been given and nor was the official required to attend the pitch side monitor.
Newcastle can feel rightly aggrieved, and as The Standard report, VAR Tomasz Kwiatkowski has been relieved of his VAR duties for the next match he was due to work on; Real Sociedad vs Salzburg on Wednesday evening.
Whilst UEFA have stopped short of issuing an apology, the inference is clear.
That won’t be any good to the Magpies if they eventually tumble out of the tournament, knowing that they were perhaps within a couple of minutes of progressing to the knockout stages, the result of their next game notwithstanding.