I started this a few posts back with: We all know that was a handball. 100%.
I am not disagreeing with you or others.
All i'm trying to do is understand what logic some VAR refs might use. Especially if they are called to task to explain in private their decision within the PGMOL. Maybe at that point PGMOL agrees with the logic or they don't. We will never know. All we know is the call was shit.
we all know the saying “All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.”
juventus put a spin on that “All that is necessary for match fixing to succeed is that observers categorically discount that possibility.”
even if you remotely consider that match fixing is possible what then are you looking for? because in the juventus case there was so much nuance to how they went about it, the majority of it would've been impossible to identify due to its subtlety, and even if identified by an attentive mind, the very subtlety of the calls would scream 'tinfoil hat' to all other observers.
just to get the conversation going you would need calls that are totally inexplicable without any degree for error in that they are clearly wrong and blatantly obvious that all onlookers cant fathom the decision made. which makes observers think this is not incompetence, it's something else - much like shearer did on motd regarding ryan fraser being wiped out by ederson and nothing given.
there are four of these in the league this season (they've been spoken about in depth and flagged in this thread already so im not going over them again) and the handball you speak of is one of them. we're not talking 'kane sending off' 'jota pen at spurs' level - that could be match fixing for all we know but even those aren't blatant enough to rule out incompetence (even tho they are certainly well above the threshold for some of the match fixing carried out by juventus, ie even more obvious decisions).
of those four decisions, 3 directly benefitted man city, 1 'declined' a decision that would've benefitted liverpool - in short, all the decisions went in the favour of one team in a two horse title race
officials can't simply hand teams points, eg juventus could be awarded a dodgy penalty but they still have to score it, so the juventus model was focused on favourable decisions that benefitted juventus to make the path to the title smoother, less difficult. it wasn't simply outrageous decisions (only so many of those before even the stalwarts say 'wait a minute...'), it was nuanced to the degree that 'soft' yellows would be handed out to players seen as dangerous to juventus so by the time they played juventus they wouldnt be eligible. it was so insidious in it's breadth that even some of those in the media were bought off to paint a picture of juventus actually being hard done-by regarding decisions, not the polar opposite, which was the true case. then you add in schedule manipulation and as you can see, it's subtle, not easy to identify in the first place, near impossible to be absolute in conclusion.
it's a long story but the short version goes the corruption implemented by juventus was discovered by accident and the rest is history. why by accident? for one it was very subtle in many of its elements, it's a very difficult thing to prove unequivocally by match decisions alone (maybe even impossible) and it absolutely relied on “All that is necessary for match fixing to succeed is that observers categorically discount that possibility.”
the italians did just that until authorities thought they smelt a rat with gambling and football, then accidentally uncovered corruption, once that possibilty was entertained and investigated it was found permeating italy's most prestigious league.
'All i'm trying to do is understand what logic some VAR refs might use'the use of the word logic here refers to
valid reasoning - factor in the
possibility of match fixing and see what valid reasoning you come up with...
