An official representative of the Referees Association confirms that there were “two errors” in the decision to disallow the Monza goal in the 1-0 defeat against Milan.

The incident caused a huge controversy on Saturday night, as Ermanno Feliciani called Warren Bondo’s fight with Theo Hernández just seconds into their encounter, after Dany Mota Carvalho had scored the goal.

He Monza coach Alessandro Nesta enragedwho understandably felt they had been wronged by the decision in what ended up being a 1-0 defeat.

On Sunday night, retired referee and current member of the Referees Association Elenito Di Liberatore was invited to DAZN’s Open VAR program to explain what happened at the U-Power Stadium.

“Here there are two mistakes that the referee made. The first is that the contact was too light to be penalized with a foul and the second was the timing.” said Di Liberatore.

“If the referee had called the foul at that moment, it would have been called a weak free kick, but that’s it. Because he let the play continue and then took the free throw, we created this situation. “It would have been appropriate to commit the foul at the beginning of the play.”

Highlights: Monza 0-1 Milan

The program also broadcast the audio of the VAR evaluation, where they said that Bondo had ripped off Theo Hernández’s shirt and therefore they would not annul the decision made on the field of play by the referee.

“The contact was slight, so obviously the VAR cannot really intervene because there is still contact and it cannot be considered a clear and obvious error. The referee should have discretion over these things on the field.

“The mistakes were made first when committing the foul and especially at the moment of the whistle.”

Referees are generally encouraged to wait until the play has been completed before blowing the whistle if a situation is doubtful or borderline, so that VAR can intervene.

If the referee had let the play develop and had not whistled, the VAR would not have intervened to annul Monza’s goal due to that small tug on the shirt of two players who did not participate in the preparation.