Match Officials Mic'd Up: Behind the scenes of the Premier League's VAR process | NBC Sports

Hello, and welcome to Match Officials Mic'd Up, the show that will allow fans to hear the in-game communication between Premier League officials for the very first time. And I am delighted to be joined by Howard Webb, the Chief Refereeing Officer at the PGMOL. Howard, what is the aim of this show? Hi, Michael. Well, I'm delighted to be here, giving the football public the first opportunity to hear the rationale behind some of the decision-making that they see every week on their TV screens in Premier League games, really drawing that curtain back on some processes, some VAR processes that have never been shown before. So a really great opportunity to break some ground. And how is this show going to work? So we're going to show you the footage that people would see at home on their TV screens as normal. And then we're going to show the same footage, but with the audio of the officials overlaid. So you can hear what the on-field officials are saying to each other, and also what the VAR and the AVAR are talking to each other when they're going through the checks. And then we'll come back and we'll talk about some of the more nuanced parts of the play. So who exactly are we going to hear about and with in this process? And if you could just give us a line on the people involved. Yeah, you're going to hear a range of voices. You're going to hear the on-field officials, the people that you see on the field, the referee, the assistant referee, they're making the decision in real time. You'll see the decision that's taken by the on-field officials. And then we'll hear the video officials. That's a VAR and an AVAR, an assistant VAR. They work together when checking the footage, trying to identify whether the on-field decision was clearly wrong. And you'll also hear another voice, a replay operator, that's a technician, who provides those important angles to the VAR and the AVAR when making their decisions. So they're the voices that we'll hear over the footage. Okay, well, let's get into the clips themselves. Let's start with the defensive handball in the Newcastle v. Arsenal game. Yep, so we're going to see a short corner taken by Newcastle. The ball finds its way to Guimaraes, takes a shot on goal, and the shot is blocked by Arsenal's Kivio. The referee on the day, Chris Kavanagh, detects a handball offence and therefore awards a penalty kick. And we know that all penalty kicks that are awarded are checked by the VAR. Brilliant, okay. Well, let's have a look on the listen, I should say, in terms of what was said behind the scenes. Yeah, got an out-swinging corner. Ball out of play could be a question mark. Looking back post. Yeah, definitely. Can you take that for us? Yeah, yeah, I've got it, mate. Weird position, could be the practice. Possible offside. Shot possible, handball. Penalty on for you. Just check. We'll check it, we'll check it, for me and the armies. Okay, maybe. Calvert, just going to check the penalty for you. This is the point of contact here. So, point of contact on the arm. Can you confirm that's definitely the arm? Is it not his thigh first? Got another angle here. So, yeah, I just need to confirm that's not his thigh. Got another angle camera. Because it looks like it's thigh onto arm. His arm's by his side, I think, at that point. So, the arm is, to me, in a natural position for the action he's making. The ball comes off the thigh and then makes a movement into that arm. I don't believe that should be a penalty kick. Ledger, are you seeing the same as me in this position? I agree, mate. It's his thigh and he's retracting his arm as well. So, I agree, it's not a penalty kick. Perfect. Can we just check the APP as well? Sure. Just to make sure that offside from the pass as well. Yeah, so from the corner. Still checking, boys, please. Still checking. So, Trippier is onside from that because I can see the back post defender there. Furthest defender back plays him on. Anything else in the APP that's worth considering? Yeah, that's fine. Shot there. Chris, it's Michael. I'm going to recommend an on-field review to review the penalty that you've awarded. If you let me know when you're at the monitor. Cal, if we have checked the APP, the APP is clear. So, the only incident to confirm is just a penalty. Okay, so what we're showing you here is the impact of the ball in the position of the arm, but also the fact the ball does strike the thigh. Yeah, and they are confirmed. So, deflection off the knee and the arm comes behind his back after the movement off the thigh. Cal, have you turned into a crowd as well? Do you require any other angles? No, mate, I'm happy. So, arms closed in. My initial reaction was that the arm was out, but it actually comes in, not to out. So, I'm going to disallow. I'm going to give restart with a drop ball to the goalkeeper. Confirmed. Well, that seemed pretty thorough to me. Would you say that was a good application of VAR? Yeah, I think so. I think it shows exactly what VAR exists for. The images show something quite different to what the referee on the field believed he'd seen. He thought he saw the arm come out away from the body to make the player unnaturally bigger to block the ball, but that didn't happen. The ball actually made contact with the thigh of Kivio and then the arm's coming back into the body to make himself actually smaller. So, really good use of VAR. You'll hear the officials also checking something called the APP. That's the attacking phase of play. They have to do that as well because, of course, when the referee goes to the screen, he might decide he wants to keep the penalty kick. It's his call at the end of the day. So, they have to check if there's any other reason why the penalty shouldn't stand, for example, like an offside. So, it still takes a bit of time to go through that diligent process, but it's worth doing so that when the referee goes to the screen, he's got all the information he needs whether or not to turn that penalty over. And it's a good decision, an important decision to take away the incorrectly awarded penalty and actually to award a dropped ball. We'll just have a quick look at the key angle, I'd say. What are the main things that you're looking at here? I guess the arm and the position of the arm and whether it touches the thigh. Yeah, to commit a handball offence, the arm needs to deliberately move towards the ball or the player has to make themselves unnaturally bigger. In this case, we'll see the ball strikes the thigh. You see the shorts moving up on that contact point and the arm's actually coming away behind the back. The player's doing what he can to get the arm away from that ball after it's deflected from the thigh. So, no handball offence. Really good, pretty efficient use of VAR to rectify a clearly wrong on-field decision. Yeah, that looked good to me. Okay, from one defensive handball, let's go up to the other end of the pitch and let's look at an attacking handball, this time of Kai Havertz. Yeah, Chelsea, Liverpool, the ball ends up in the back of the goal. It comes off Kai Havertz. The officials on the field don't smell anything wrong with the goal. They award the goal. We know that all goals get checked. Of course, this one gets checked to see if there's any reason why that goal should not be allowed to stay. Well, let's have a listen to what they said behind the scenes. Nocso! Outside! It's gone by Kai Havertz. Come off his chest! On-field decision's goal, because I think it is. Kai Havertz's chest. Okay, mate, just check at the goal. Point of contact there. Back through. Oh, just play through and then tip back to the net. Yeah, so just frame it on the arm. Right, that's clearly arm. Yeah. Tails. Yeah? I recommend you disallow the goal. It's handball. Leads immediately to the ball in the net. Okay, so it's factual, so we're going... Factual handball. Penalty spot. It's on the penalty spot. Okay, Howard, so a couple of points there. What is the meaning of factual, and why did Anthony Taylor not go to the screen? Yeah, we get asked that question quite a lot. We don't always see the referee go to the screen. If the situation is more of a factual nature, so, for example, is the ball out of play or not, or is the foul inside or outside the penalty area, a matter of fact, or in this case, has the ball factually hit the arm or not, and that's the only sort of important point, then we don't waste time by sending the referee to the screen. Just to look at this same factual matter, we think we can just change the decision on the field without wasting time by sending the referee to the screen when there's not that element of kind of judgment that has to be made by the referee to make the final decision, and that's what we saw in this case. And in terms of this law that we have in front of us, happy that everything has been adhered to, and that basically explains the lock? Yeah, obviously, we've seen one handball offence earlier involving a defender. When we're talking about attackers, it's quite different. This aspect of having to make yourself unnaturally bigger or deliberately handling the ball, that doesn't matter. All that has to happen for this offence to have been committed is for the ball to make contact with the attacker's hand or arm and then go directly into goal, like we saw with Kai Havertz in this case, or they score immediately afterwards. So, for example, the ball might drop to his foot and then he scores. That's also not allowed. It's considered to be a handball offence. If it's just accidental contact like this one was, then a teammate can score. But in this case, unfortunately for Kai Havertz, he doesn't know much about it. The ball strikes him, it goes into goal, it has to be disallowed. Anthony Taylor believed it came off the chest, awarded the goal, VAR, able to check it, stepped in, and correctly overturned the goal through that factual recommendation for review. OK, so that wraps up the handball. I think we're going to go over now to the King Power Stadium and have a look at a goal that was disallowed in an attacking phase of play. Just clear this one up for us, Howard. Yeah, the corner comes in from Arsenal, it goes to Leandro Crossard, puts a lovely ball in the top corner, doesn't he? And, of course, all goals get checked. And on this one, the VAR suspects there could be a foul on the goalkeeper, Danny Ward. That's what he focuses on when looking at the build-up to this goal. OK, well, again, let's have a look and a listen to what was said on VAR. Yeah, on there, yeah, yeah. Keeper, no man, anything else there, no man. Shot, goal, goal awarded on fifth. Keeper's asking for it, but he's the only one. Shall we go for the corner? I'm going to check the goal for you. So, first point of concern is, is there a foul on the keeper? So, Ben White is holding the right arm of the keeper. Can you give me a view of that? I didn't see anything. Yeah. So, Ben White, he's there. Got another angle of him. No, I can't see that clearly. I've got suspicion that Ben White is holding that arm, he links it, pulls it into his body with his left arm. Have you got anything from the goal camp? There's nothing clear on broadcast. Can you see he's holding his hand there? That's a perfect image. So, Ben White's right arm is holding onto Danny Ward's glove. Can you see that from the goal camp? And that impacts his ability to play the ball cleanly. I'm going to recommend an on-field review for a foul on the goalkeeper before the goal score. OK. Craig, it's Michael. I'm going to recommend an on-field review for a possible foul on the goalkeeper in the build-up to the goal. Let me know when you're at the screen. So, what I'm showing you now is an image from behind you, so it's in the goal. You can see Ben White's right hand is holding the glove of Danny Ward. So, that's the still image of the foul, and he keeps hold of it as Danny Ward tries to punch the ball away. So, Danny Ward is being held by Ben White's right arm. Yeah, so he keeps hold of the glove, as you can see, sustained holding by the right hand. Yeah. So, Howard, in this instance, it feels like there was one real good angle, actually, to find this foul. How important is that to have a variety of cameras and to obviously find the exact one before making that decision? Yeah, we want the officials to look through a range of angles, not look at the same one over and over again. We don't want that. But we want them to look through the angles they have, looking for something that might be decisive. The decisive angle, kind of like the smoking gun that shows something very clear. In this case, we see that from the camera behind the goal, which illuminates for the VAR the actions of Ben White in holding the arm of Danny Ward. And this is what we think is the key angle. And you think in particular, there's a sustained holding as opposed to just a quick grab. Let's have a look. Yeah, I mean, just contact on its own is not always a foul. Contact happens all over the field, and particularly in these tight-set peak situations. But we're looking for the impact of the contact. That's what the officials have to make a judgment on, on the field and also as VAR and AVAR. And here you'll see that the right arm of Ben White has got hold of that right glove of Danny Ward, the goalkeeper, who needs to use that hand to do his job. And it's not just a fleeting contact. It actually goes on for a while. It's sustained. I think it's reasonable to conclude that that has an impact on Danny Ward's ability to save the ball, to punch the ball. And that's what makes it clear. There's a lot of subjectivity in our sport. We don't want VAR to be used for those really subjective calls that split opinion. You know, there's some very clearly correct calls, some very clearly wrong calls. They're easy, but there's a whole swathe of situations that are in the gray zone. And we don't want to use VAR too often in those gray zone situations. We want to reserve it for the times when it's clearly wrong, just so that people understand when VAR will and won't get involved. And that's the job of the VAR, is something clearly wrong. In this case, the fact that this was not penalized was clearly wrong, and therefore the VAR quite rightly stepped in because of that impact on the goalkeeper. Brilliant. Well, thank you, Howard. It's time for a quick break, but there is more on-field insight to come as we look at serious foul play and the method behind offside decisions. Welcome back to Match Officials Mic'd Up, where we have more in-game audio to bring you now. Howard, we are moving into a more subjective area now of serious foul play, this time at Molineux with Johnny. Yeah, we're going to see Wolves against Leeds United. We're going to see a tackle made by Johnny Otto of Wolves on Luke Hayling of Leeds. The on-field decision given by Michael Salisbury, the referee, is a yellow card for what he deems to be a reckless foul challenge. The VAR checks the footage, seeing that it's a heavy challenge, to see whether the non-issuing of a red card for serious foul play is clearly wrong. Okay, well, let's have a listen into what the officials had to say about this incident. Tackle, place the ball. Okay, it could be... Yellow card. It's going to be yellow card on field, 19, Johnny. I need this close-up. Number 19, go on. Thank you. 19. Okay, I've got that, okay. Yellow card. This is... He's checking serious foul play. Just checking for serious foul play. Okay, so he's gone over the ball. He's gone over the ball. Clearly gone over the ball. Sol, Sol, Sol. And full studs on the shin. Okay, so the view that I want is from the super slow-mo. Yeah, this one here. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then with a second one, sorry. Sol, Sol, I'm going to be recommending an on-field review for possible serious foul play. Okay. It's on, sir. Is it just this angle, or is there another one? By me, I, where I am. Just this one. The foot flicks off the ball. Don't come any further. And it's full-planted onto the inside of the shin. It's with Magnolia Casillas, full spin. Let's give him the tight. Okay. Okay, I'm going to confirm the restart. It's still a free-kick. Now. No, no further. No further. And it will be a red card for Ward 19. No further. Thank you. Interesting. So how do you determine whether there's a challenge that actually meets that threshold to turn the decision around? Yeah, I mean, this one's a good use of VAR. Of course, tackles are happening all the time on the field. Some contact is happening. It's the job of the officials on the field primarily, but then the VAR as well, to determine whether or not the tackle that's made, the foul that's made, endangers the safety of the opponent or has excessive force. It takes a judgment, but we're looking for things like full contact from the studs. We're looking for the point of contact, i.e. above the ankle, like we saw in this case. If the foot-on-foot contact happens, it's generally deemed to be a reckless tackle. It's not endangering the safety of the opponent. But when you see this type of full contact, not a glancing one, like we also see sometimes, but something much more full-on, like this one from Johnny Otto, then it gets you into that excessive force, endangering the safety of an opponent sort of place. And that's when we expect the VAR to get involved. But we want to be consistent in our application. So you'll see situations that are more glancing, that are less forceful than this one, where the VAR will not get involved. We don't want inconsistency in application of VAR. We want them to look for these really clear ones as this one is, so that people understand when VAR will and won't step in. Okay, that sounds pretty clear to me. Let's move forward to an offside decision here of Joe Linton, which got a lot of people talking. Because I, for one, Howard, when I first watched it, I thought, wow, he's way offside. Why doesn't the linesman flag early? Yeah, and I know this can cause frustration. West Ham, Newcastle here, flag goes up at the end of the play. Everybody in the stadium is thinking that's miles offside. Stick the flag up earlier, Mr. Assistant Referee, but he doesn't, he delays it and we'll see why. Yeah, well, let's have a listen to why it was overturned. Mike, I'm delaying, I'm delaying, I'm delaying, still delaying offside. Okay, checking the decision. So that's frame two. Okay, this is really close. So I need, I'm going to need lines on this, please. Sure, yeah. Yeah, across it is. So which defender do you want? Defender's 24 by the looks of it. 24? I will need to check. Yeah, let's have a look on the far side. Go to the far side. Okay. Yeah. Just checking my other angles. Yeah, okay. Craig, this is tight, so just going to have to use crosshairs to get to a decision here. Okay. Okay, trying to tell me left or right. Yeah, just slightly left. Deg! Left, yeah. One there, that's one more, please, over his heel. Checking it. Deg! There you go. Deg! Yep. Thanks. That's up to us. Can I just check with the line with the 24? 24, yeah. Which body part? Yeah, that's okay. No, I don't need anything else now, that's fine. He's clearly the last defender on the far side. Now on the attacker, please. On the attacker, yeah. The attacker is clearly shoulder that's the furthest part. Yeah, sure, okay. And one more frame to the left. One to the left there. Yep. Okay. Lock that in. Lock that in, yeah. Okay, happy to confirm those lines? Happy to confirm. Okay. Craig, the decision is, the lines have come out as onside, so I'm going to recommend that you award the goal, and the recommendation is you award the goal. Wow, that went tighter than I thought. Thanks, boys. Sorry, team. No, no, no. No problem, mate. Good process. So you hear some of the officials congratulating each other there, and rightly so. The assistant referee made a good decision. However, what is the threshold in terms of, you know, when somebody thinks it's that far offside, that far, in terms of keeping your flag down? Yeah, and the AR involved in that situation, Scott Ledger, you know, great assistant referee, will be disappointed he didn't get right on the field, but, you know, but he did the right thing by delaying the flag, because he recognised that it was a close call. It wasn't one that was clearly offside to his level of expertise on making those judgements, and also there was an attacking opportunity for Joel Linton to go through and score. So when there's a good opportunity to score, and he recognises it's close, he will delay the flag, because there's a chance he'll get it wrong from time to time, as we saw in this situation. We don't want to delay the flag unnecessarily. If it's very clearly offside, the flag should go up straight away. The skill is recognising when it's close, and it's often closer than people think just watching casually. So we have to give our assistant referees a bit of credit here for the way that they applied the delay technique, allowing the VAR to have a look at it, and in this case, giving a goal back to the game that was correctly scored. Brilliant, and that's exactly what we want. But we do have to admit that occasionally even the VAR get it wrong. Yeah, we make errors. We're dealing with human beings. We're making judgements on whether something's clearly wrong, or sometimes just not applying the process quite in the right way. We're still learning as we go too, and there are some errors, and we're obviously trying to reduce those as much as we possibly can. We're going to show one today. It's a game at Brentford against Bournemouth where a penalty was awarded that was given by the on-field official. The VAR checks the penalty as normal and check-completes the award of the penalty kick when actually a different outcome should have been reached because of a foul in the attacking phase of play just before the penalty. OK, well, again, let's have a listen to how this penalty was confirmed. Blue head. Click. Red. Now. Red. Start of attacking phase. OK, a bit of help, Longy? No, no, no, no, no! The second one, the second holding with his arm... OK, on-field decision is a penalty. The second one, the second one where he's dragging. OK, checking the award of the penalty, mate. Yes. Got him. Keep your players away from me. Keep your players away. There's enough in there. There's enough to support that, yeah. Just check the APP. Check the penalty, mate. We're just doing the APP. All right, mate. Penalty's been checked. Now we're checking the build-up. That's fine. Yeah, run it through. No, just the pen for me. Oh, good. It'll be checked. Check complete. Check complete. Thanks, Andre. Get your players away or they'll go on your line. I'll give you another chance. You go on your line. One more chance. One more chance. On your line. Yep. It's a pen. OK, Howard, so what went wrong in that instance? I think we can agree when we look at the footage that the final action by Sanezi of Bournemouth, by putting his arm across Ivan Toney, is certainly a credible penalty decision, and there's no way in isolation the VAR will overturn that. But it's also important not just to look at that final action but to look at what happened in the build-up to it. And when we look at it, we can see that Ivan Toney locks the arm of Sanezi just before Sanezi reacts by putting his arm across, Toney went off balanced. Unfortunately, in this particular case, the process of checking it wasn't quite thorough enough. The angle that was important was looked at, but it wasn't looked at early enough in the sequence. There was a loop that was presented to the VAR by the operator, which didn't show how that contact by Toney had been created. The VAR did check it, tried to do it as efficiently as possible. We've got to always be careful not to sacrifice accuracy for speed, and we're always trying to get our VARs to be as efficient as they can be. We know it causes frustration when checks take some time, but we've got to go through the due diligence of checking the APP for offsides, for possible fouls. Unfortunately, on this occasion, the offence by Toney wasn't recognised by the VAR and the penalty was checked completed. It was a crucial decision, of course, and it went against Bournemouth, and it should have been overturned and a free kick given to the defence. Let's have a look at that angle that we think is the best angle on this. You can quite clearly see he's dragging his arm, and Toney's dragging the defender's arm into the box. You'd have been proud maybe of that technique, Michael. I wouldn't have had the strength to do it. But, yeah, Toney's, I guess, quite clever there in terms of dragging the defender into him. It causes Senezia to be off balance and the arm comes across Toney. In the end, the referee sees that. It's much easier to see the final action. It's quite well disguised, the first one. It's understandable why the referee doesn't get it. But as a VAR, we need to get it right. We need to look at those angles. We have to take time to go through the angles, not looking at them over and over again, but just looking for that definitive angle that we talked about earlier that shows that evidence, that information you need to make the right call after the check and get the decision right. Just quickly, when errors do occur, how do we learn from them? Yeah, we talk about them all the time. We share all the information throughout the week after each match round with our VARs, our referees. We get together on a regular basis and go through clips. We spend time at the hub, our VAR hub going through process. So we're looking to learn all the time, reduce errors year on year and continue being a real positive to the game. That's what we're here to do. Correct, clear errors. And by and large, that's what it does. But we've got to learn when we get it wrong. Howard, that's absolutely brilliant. Thank you for all your time today and for a fascinating insight into match officiating in the Premier League. We hope you've all enjoyed Match Officials Mic'd Up. Hi there, I'm Rebecca Lowe, studio host for NBC's coverage of the Premier League. Don't forget to hit subscribe to watch more videos all season long. For even more Premier League content from original series to live matches, head over to Peacock and be sure to tune in for Premier League mornings every weekend on USA Network and on Peacock. We will see you over there.