Pape Sarr goes through the back of Moisés Caicedo before striking the ball into the net before he was penalised for a foul on VAR review.View image in fullscreen
Pape Sarr goes through the back of Moisés Caicedo before striking the ball into the net before he was penalised for a foul on VAR review.
Ange Postecoglou insisted his ear-cup gesture at Tottenham fans had been misinterpreted as he raged at a VAR intervention that denied his team a goal in their 1-0 defeat by Chelsea.
Spurs were poor but they looked to have fashioned a lifeline when Pape Sarr, on as a substitute, beat Robert Sánchez from long range in the 70th minute. Postecoglou’s decision to introduce Sarr for Lucas Bergvall had been met with chants from the travelling support that he did not know what he was doing.
When Sarr’s goal hit the net, Postecoglou turned to the Spurs fans and cupped his ear. The goal would then be disallowed by the VAR, Jarred Gillett, after a lengthy delay for a foul by Sarr on Moisés Caicedo. To add further insult, Sarr was booked for the kick at Caicedo’s knee.
“Jesus mate, it’s incredible how things get interpreted” Postecoglou said. “We’d just scored, I just wanted to hear them cheer. Because we’d been through a tough time and I thought it was a cracking goal. I wanted them to get really excited. I felt at that point we could potentially go on and win the game.
“It’s not the first time they’ve booed my substitutions or my decisions – that’s fine, they’re allowed to do that. But we’d just scored an equaliser … I was just hoping we could get some excitement.”
Postecoglou was asked whether the gesture risked alienating the supporters, who have endured a difficult season. This was Spurs’s 16th Premier League defeat. “I am at such a disconnect with the world these days that who knows, maybe you’re right … I don’t know,” he replied. “But that’s not what my intention was.”
Postecoglou has long been an outspoken critic of the VAR system. “VAR was called in for clear and obvious errors,” he said. “How long did it take tonight? Six minutes. For a clear and obvious error. Who cares if it was a foul or not? There were so many incidents out there. What does it matter? What’s the point of having a referee then? Clear and obvious means you go to the screen … [not] standing around for six minutes.
“We all just accept it. It’s going to be refereed by AI soon. We might as well dispense with the players when some genius comes up with a game with no participants at some point. Referees aren’t refereeing.”