The Video Assistant Referee or VAR has been highly controversial for its inconsistent decisions across football in the past few years. But what happens when you don’t have VAR, an Egyptian referee was caught in one such situation and he opted for an outrageous solution to review the decision.
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The incident took place during a second-division match in Egypt. Here the VAR system was not in operation, hence referee Mohamed Farouk had to use a crowd member’s phone during the match between Suez and Al-Nasr.
Al-Nasr scored a late equaliser, but the Suez weren’t convinced and protested about a handball in the play. Here Mohamed Farouk took a fan’s phone and spent significant time reviewing the video of the goal. The referee eventually decided to disallow the goal.
Ch eck out the incident here:
This decision led to a lot of uproar in the stadium but the match was resumed after the atmosphere calmed down. The referee added 15 minutes of extra time, where Suez managed to score its third goal. As the final whistle blew, the referee was subjected to countless objections by Al-Nasr over the incident of cancelling the goal.
The referee needed police protection, amid continued protests from Al-Nasr players. A member of the board of directors of Al-Nasr Club, Ahmed Al-Ahmar was livid with this call and expressed that there was a massive in violation of the regulations of the second division game of the Egyptian league.
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