Belgian defender Thomas Meunier had deemed the cancellation of Tiago Santos’ equalising goal after the match on Sunday 1 September to be illegitimate. Based on the new images revealed on Tuesday, he has retracted his comments.
“Mea culpa towards the referees.” The message is brief but has the merit of existing. This Wednesday, September 4, Thomas Meunier presented on X his apologies to the men in black who officiated during the match between Losc and PSG on Sunday.
That evening, still on his social networks, the Lille defender torpedoed Benoît Bastien and the VAR. “Cruel disappointment. So close, yet so far. Proud of the team and the public, despite everything! I hope to be able to say the same thing about the referees soon,” he sighed.
A clear allusion to the goal disallowed for Tiago Santos on a free kick from Zhegrova deflected by André then extended by Meunier to the Portuguese in the 82nd minute. This equalization at 2-2, which occurred just moments after the reduction of the gap by Edon Zhegrova, was disallowed by the video referee for offside.
The wrath of Olivier Létang and Bruno Genesio
Based on the first images released and the statement of the central referee after the match, the Lille club’s management was convinced that they had been cheated and made this known in the corridors of the Pierre-Mauroy stadium.
“I even went to see Mr. Bastien, who had nothing to do with it but who confirmed to me that Thomas Meunier touching the ball put Tiago Santos back into play,” Olivier Létang, the president of Losc, was indignant, assuring that the “championship was truncated.” His coach, Bruno Genesio, followed suit: “On the bus, what were the referees doing, were they watching something else, a film?”
However, it turns out that the equalizing goal was rightly disallowed. This is what the Refereeing Department (DA) of the French Football Federation (FFF) indicates in an article in Le Parisien dated Tuesday. With new images to support it, the DA attests that Tiago Santos was both offside at the time of Benjamin André’s header and Thomas Meunier’s service.
Kop Nord Monday September 2 – L1: first defeat for LOSC against Paris
“Too hasty treatment”
Amaury Delerue, manager-instructor of Ligue 1 referees, assures our colleagues that the confusion is due to “overly hasty processing on the part of the video assistant, who did not take into account Meunier’s deviation on the trajectory of the ball. It creates a new situation of reading offside, so the VAR process was not respected until the end at time T”.
In short, the VAR did indeed make a mistake by failing to notice the Belgian defender’s gesture, but this error had no impact on the score since the goal was not valid in all cases.
Amaury Delerue intends to draw conclusions from this imbroglio. He has called together all the match referees, with the aim of making each of them aware of the “difficult to read” situations and inviting them to take their time to ensure that the right decision is made.
The former Ligue 1 referee was also due to meet Bruno Genesio on Tuesday to explain to him the reasons for the cancellation of Tiago Santos’ equaliser. It is not known what the outcome of this meeting was.
Florian Bouhot BFM Regions journalist
