Sunday 9 June 2019

VAR catches Wilson out

We had to wait a long time for Gareth Southgate to finally give Callum Wilson a third run out for England, but he did get on towards the end of the second half against Switzerland in the Nation's League Third Place play-off. It was a game where I would have thought Southgate played a few of the players on the fringe of the starting 11, but he played a pretty strong team and only narrowly squeaked through on penalties after extra-time.
Callum was close to adding to his England goals but he didn't beat VAR this time.
The talking point of the game though was Callum Wilson's disallowed goal. Raheem Sterling had made a good cross form the left byline that reached Dele Alli. And Alli's header came off the cross bar, which Wilson quickly pounced upon to stab into the goal. The finish was a typical Wilson poacher's goal and at first few people could see anything wrong with the goal which was celebrated by England fans.

However, VAR was activated and the referee took a close look at the build up in which it could be seen that Wilson pulled back his defender before making his way towards the six-yard box. Without VAR I don't expect that it would have been picked up, and we are going to have to get used to this kind of thing next season. Wilson too is going to have to see that he won't get away with these kind of things if he tries them in the future.



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There is no getting away from it it is cheating to get an advantage. But what annoys me is that England are only getting good at it now when VAR is coming in, whereas in past years it wouldn't have been a surprise to see Maradona bending the rules to his advantage and getting away with it.

In other news, Tottenham are reported to be considering £40m bid for Nathan Aké, according to the Daily Mail.

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