Why Gross avoided wearing red and Gravenberch was still not given a chance by the Dutch
Despite the fact that Liverpool players are leaving for international duty this week, there is still the issue of the post-Brighton reaction to resolve.
Why wasn’t Pascal Gross sent off?
The fact that Gross wasn’t disciplined or sent a warning after pulling Dominik Szoboszlai’s shirt collar back and giving up a penalty was pretty perplexing.
Since he was not making a legitimate challenge for the ball and the regulations indicated that a red should have been given, there was no double jeopardy in action. VAR expert Dale Johnson of ESPN has tried to explain why that did not happen.
The distance, play direction, possibility of keeping or obtaining control of the ball, and the positioning of defenders are all taken into account when evaluating “obvious goal-scoring opportunities.”
After Bart Verbruggen, Szoboszlai simply needed to sprint onto the ball and slip it into an open goal.
Johnson clarifies, however, that “[Craig] Pawson (lead VAR) has decided that the general direction of play and the fact that Szoboszlai doesn’t have control of the ball create enough doubt that the Hungary international would have a genuine chance of scoring.”
If they didn’t believe it was a real possibility, they were obviously not watching the same events!
Johnson continued, “The VAR rarely gets involved in DOGSO situations unless it’s very clear there’s been a subjective error, but we do see consistency on this,” before adding, “it’s surprising that Gross wasn’t even booked.”
