On Facundo Torres' disallowed goal: A response from PRO

I have a quick addendum to my post-match wrapup from earlier today, following Austin FC's 1-1 draw against the San Jose Earthquakes on Saturday night.

Fan discussions around the disallowed goal scored by Facundo Torres in the 10th minute are swirling around two talking points:

• The ball-on-arm contact that referee Sergii Boiko ruled to take place following video review was "incidental" and therefore shouldn't have been factored in (versus, say, the handball called on Brendan Hines-Ike in the recent match in Portland, resulting in a PK, in which he "made himself bigger" by having an arm extended from his body when said arm made contact with the ball); and
• The length of the video review and the inconclusive-to-some nature of the video evidence doesn't meet the "clear and obvious error" standard that was invoked as rationale for video review when it was first introduced to MLS a decade ago.

I reached out to Chris Rivett, Director of Communications and External Relations for the Professional Referee Organization (PRO), which oversees refereeing and video review in MLS, for answers to those questions. Here's what I learned.

A handball is a handball (when an attacker does it)

Whether incidental or not, and whether an arm is flapping like a bird wing or pressed lovingly close to one's side, it doesn't matter as current handball rules are written. Per Rivett, if the ball strikes the attacker's hand or arm on an attacking play, in which that attacker scores directly or immediately after, it counts as a handball offense. Given that Torres' next touch on the ball is the one with his foot that scores the goal, that appears to have met that "immediately after" standard.

(I don't like it either, and I'd like to see a distinction made between incidental and deliberate contact, but that's not the way the rule is written, as frustrating as it was to follow last night.)

It's not necessarily about 'clear and obvious'

The second facet involves when video review is invoked, and if the standard of "clear and obvious error" is really in play, or there's something in the understanding of the rules that gives VAR more agency.

This is what Rivett said:

“Clear and obvious as a concept is still the fundamental principle of video review, but over more than a decade, it has evolved towards being about clear video evidence. The referee will explain to the VAR what they saw in the moment. If, when the VAR checks the footage, they can provide clear video evidence that shows something different, then that is when you would expect a review to be recommended.”

Perhaps you think "clear" is doing a lot of work in describing last night's "clear video evidence" of the goal. But the evolution that Rivett is referencing here allows you to see at least how VAR felt justified stepping in, to helpfully provide information that Boiko might have missed from his singular vantage point.

The disallowed goal won't be the most talked about controversial referee call from Saturday night — imagine being a Western Michigan fan right now — but Jon Gallagher certainly sounded flummoxed by the decision in his post-match comments.

He reporting that the referee told players, "It was about millimeters." He thought that it's hard to square "millimeters" and "clear and obvious," but unpacking it a bit more, it looks like those elements belong to different facets. The "millimeters" is about where the video footage showed the ball striking Torres, and the ability to get that video footage to the ref is where the "clear video evidence" standard comes in.

Verde All Day is a reader-supported online publication covering Austin FC. Additional support is provided by Austin Telco Federal Credit Union. For more coverage, check out Emergency Podcast! (an Austin FC Podcast) wherever you get your podcasts.