Spartak was robbed of the winning goal? Was there a penalty kick against them

The match between “Spartak” and “Ural”, even though very few spectators saw it live , will be remembered by everyone who watched it. And beautiful goals, and – unfortunately – controversial refereeing decisions.

Spartak’s winning goal was not counted: it looks like a premature whistle

The Spartacists bounced back twice, came to the end with a score of 2:2 and at the very end of regular time scored the third goal after a free-kick. But the goal was not immediately counted.

Referee Vitaly Meshkov blew the whistle even before the key kick – he reacted to the collision of goalkeeper Ilya Pomazun, he probably took it for a violation of the rules. But in fact, the keeper collided with his own defender at the exit.

Alexander Sobolev scored almost into an empty net, but in the end the episode was canceled.

The replays and VAR captions do not add up to a complete picture, but the circumstances allow us to state how the moment developed: Meshkov saw contact with the goalkeeper, immediately blew the whistle, and everything after, including Sobolev’s kick, happened after the stoppage, and therefore became illegal.

There was a pause for video review – however, the VAR in this case did not have the tools to influence the episode. The only thing that could theoretically be detected was offside at the time of filing, then the same outcome (an episode without a goal) would have had a clearer and fairer justification. But there was definitely no “outside the game”.

So everything points to Meshkov’s mistake – with a hasty whistle, he sounded at the moment of Sobolev’s blow or even a little earlier.

On Saturday, Sports.ru aired a conversation between Anatoly Sinyaev (“Ale, ref”) and FIFA instructor Fakhrad Abdullayev, where he said: “Inexperienced referees can blow the whistle faster than necessary. For example, they saw a hand – a whistle. A pause is needed, because it is possible that there was no hand, and the referee can interrupt the scoring chance. Experienced referees after a foul near the gate give 3-4 seconds to complete the episode. It is not for nothing that both the video referee and the referee in the field must obtain a VAR license.