Standard beat Dender 2-0 in the Belgian Cup. Last 16. I read it at the chip shop on Monday, in my weekly football magazine. The score hadn’t changed.
There is one detail I read twice. Right at the start of the match, Casper Nielsen had his foot stamped on just as he was about to shoot in the box. The referee, Anthony Letellier, did not react. And nobody went to look at a screen. Because at this stage of the Cup, there is no video assistance.
No VAR. No screen. No rectangle drawn in the air with fingers. A referee saw an incident, he decided, we carried on playing. I put my fork down. It was 1980, a Friday in October.
Adnane Abid, who scored and set up the second goal, was frustrated by the lack of video. He said: “Casper told me he had never seen such a clear penalty”. I understand. I’m not criticising. I’m comparing.
In my day, we called that a passage of play. We talked about it at the café until Thursday. On Friday, there was another match to talk about. Today, everything must be settled before half-time, reviewed, reframed, archived.
Note that I’m not against progress. I’m against this progress. For the rest of the match, Standard suffered in the second half and Matthieu Epolo had to intervene several times. No screen would have changed that.
Silly question, but if VAR only exists from a certain round, does the penalty exist before that?
I didn’t answer the little one. Standard are in the last 16, and Casper Nielsen keeps a penalty nobody reviewed.
It’s true, we checked: L'Avenir.
