Sign up to FREE email alerts from Football London - Spurs Invalid Email Something went wrong, please try again later. Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice UEFA have attempted to clarify the decision made by VAR during Tottenham Hotspur's Champions League quarter-finals second leg at Manchester City. The football governing body has defended the decisions made during the tie at the Etihad Stadium which saw Spurs make the final four despite losing 4-3 on the night. Spurs edged out Man City on the away goals rule, with Fernando Llorente bundling the ball home in the second half for the crucial goal which put Mauricio Pochettino's men through. But controversy came about due to the fact that the goal was reviewed on VAR by referee Cuneyt Cakir, with some angles showing that the ball struck Llorente's elbow. But it's believed not all of the relevant angles were shown to Cakir, something which left former referee Mark Halsey wondering why the angles was not available. Rule changes which will come into effect next season will likely have ruled out the goal. The incident has sparked anger and led to the Manchester Evening News reaching out to UEFA about the incident. Whilst no answer has been offered, a spokesperson has had this to say: “All relevant angles were made available to the referee to take his decision last night.” It's unlikely we have heard the last of this but from a Spurs' point of view, all that matters is the upcoming Champions League semi-final tie against Ajax. The first leg takes place in the capital on Tuesday, April 30. Keep up to date with the latest Tottenham Hotspur news, features and exclusives from football.london via our free WhatsApp service . Text NEWS to 07776197989 and then add the number to your phone contacts book as spurs dot london (case sensitive, with spaces) to receive daily updates and breaking news from Alasdair Gold and the team on Spurs. Your phone number won't be shared with any other members of the group. Click here for more information on the service.<doc-sep>Jonathan White + FOLLOW Jonathan White joined the Post in 2017 after a decade reporting on sport from China. He originally moved to Beijing to coach football in 2007 and later spent two years in Shanghai.<doc-sep>In a perfect world, we would have been talking only about four goals in 11 minutes, one of the wildest quarterfinal matches in history, how Manchester City's season is reduced to a "mere" potential Treble and how Tottenham are 180 minutes away from their first European Cup final. But we live in an imperfect world, and one of the legacies of Wednesday night at the Etihad is the controversy surrounding Fernando Llorente's goal and the use of Video Assistant Referees (VAR). After speaking to multiple sources, here's an explainer to help sort things out. Cox: Tactical keys to the Champions League quarterfinals Ogden: Seven goals and VAR drama. Best CL game ever? OK, let's get to the point. Was the decision correct? It was. The reason for all the confusion is that there has been a perfect storm of factors to muddy the waters, from IFAB's decision to tweak the Laws of the Game, to directives given to UEFA referees about how to interpret accidental handballs that lead to goals, to the fact that too many folks simply aren't familiar with the Laws of the Game and their interpretations. First, we all have to agree that Fernando Llorente's handball was not deliberate because if you think it was, then everything that follows is irrelevant. So based on the directives UEFA use to determine whether a handball is deliberate, his arm was in a natural position, in line with his "body silhouette" and therefore it was an accidental handball, yes? Sure. He's jumping, his arm is by his side, it's not outstretched... yeah, it's accidental. But I thought IFAB had determined that accidental handballs that lead to a goal would be punished with a free kick... They did, albeit with certain caveats. In fact, one of the law changes says that it's a free kick if "a player gains control/possession of the ball after it touches their hand/arm and then scores or creates a goal-scoring opportunity." Another one says it's a free kick if "the ball goes into the goal after touching an attacking player's hand/arm." Llorente's situation was between the two scenarios. The ball touched his arm, but then it hit his hip as well before going into the goal. And you can't really say he gained control of the ball after the touch with the arm, but he did benefit from it as it then hit his hip. The thing to remember is that what you just read is irrelevant here; these rules will apply from next season. OK, so this season if it's an accidental handball that leads to a goal, then it stands? So why was Neymar's goal in the Champions League final four years ago disallowed? Well, that incident caused some controversy too, and by the letter of the law some argued it should not have been disallowed. But UEFA has issued directives this season to use a level of discretion. Regarding Neymar's goal, he obviously gained an advantage from the fact that his header hit his outstretched hand. You can't say it was deliberate (Neymar's good, but not that good) but, quite obviously, if his arm hadn't been out there and it hadn't deflected off it, he wouldn't have scored. So the referee has the discretion to disallow goals like that. In Llorente's case on Wednesday night, his arm was exactly where it should have been. It was entirely accidental. You can also make the argument that if it had not hit Llorente's arm, it would still have hit his hip and gone in. In other words, it's a discretion call where the referee, in conjunction with the VAR, has to determine what effect the inadvertent touch had on the goal being scored. Some may disagree with the interpretation, but that's the process. The ball did touch Llorente's arm en route to being the decisive goal that helped Tottenham eliminate Man City from the Champions League. But there's a reason why that didn't matter. Rich Linley - CameraSport via Getty Images So why did the VAR call the referee, Cuneyt Cakir, to the video monitor? For two reasons. First, because it's still a huge call and there's an element of discretion. Referees always have the final word on subjective calls. Sometimes they follow what the VAR tells them without checking, sometimes they want to see for themselves. And sometimes VAR wants them to see it. Second -- and folks have seemingly forgotten this -- the referee didn't have a view of the incident. Llorente's body was in the way. He could guess that it hit a part of his body -- and it's what would have happened until a few months ago in the Champions League, and what will happen until next year in the Premier League -- but it's best if he sees it himself. What about the fact that, of the various camera angles at the VAR's disposal, Cakir wasn't shown the one from behind the goal, which most clearly shows the ball coming off Llorente's elbow? What I was told here is that it would not have added anything significant to the decision. Cakir realized as soon as he saw the replays that the ball struck Llorente's arm: you can see the impact it makes on his skin. That part of the equation thus was never in question and additional angles weren't needed. What did matter was whether his arm was in a natural position (it was: he couldn't have tucked it any closer to his body) and what the material impact was on what happened next. That too was minimal. More generally, VARs tend not to use behind-the-goal angles because the depth perception isn't great. So there was no grand conspiracy? I don't think so. If there had been, they wouldn't have shown Cakir any of the replays, right? The VAR could have just let the goal stand.<doc-sep>There is always the chance, when English clubs meet in European knockout football, that players who know each other so well will treat it as a pumped-up Premier League encounter rather than showing the respect and caution they might have afforded continental opponents, and the memorably frenetic showdown between Manchester City and Tottenham was an instant classic of the genre. Never mind the woeful defending in the first 20 minutes, the inability of either side to hold on to an advantage or manage the game professionally, this was English football at its most appealing because both teams were going for goals and glory. Cagey it was not; it was simply a question of who could score more, and when the dust has settled on a thrilling and often controversial ding-dong between two of the best teams in the country it will be seen that the much-maligned away-goals rule had a lot to do with that. Put simply, City went out because they failed to score at Tottenham. Spurs went through because they scored twice at the Etihad in the first 10 minutes, and from that point on there could never be equilibrium, one side or the other would always be winning. Many would like to scrap the away-goals rule, now regarded as an anachronism in modern, no-expense-spared football, but it was originally introduced in an attempt to avoid the awkwardness of replays in ties featuring teams from different countries, and it now functions just as well as a means of avoiding extra time and penalties. What’s wrong with extra time and penalties? Well, nothing in theory, apart from the fact a shootout is an arbitrary and unsatisfactory way to separate evenly matched sides. In practice the main problem over the years has been the emergency tie-break tacked on to the end has tended to loom too large over the actual event, with teams settling for unadventurous, risk-free football in the knowledge they would be in with at least a 50-50 chance after the final whistle. City v Spurs was anything but risk free and unadventurous, it was glorious, and the away-goals rule deserves at least part of the credit. Not that the Etihad quarter-final thriller has any chance of being remembered for that. Not when VAR was involved in two crucial decisions, awarding a goal to one side and cruelly robbing the other of what looked a winner. Pep Guardiola was not completely satisfied with the goal awarded to Fernando Llorente, arguing that from one camera angle the ball appeared to have gone in off his right arm. This is the question for football in 2019: is a single camera angle enough, when most others appeared to show nothing wrong? Even VAR will not settle all disputes – to hear some City fans complaining you would think Llorente had punched the ball into the net – but what can be said is that the referee and the remote scrutineers examined plenty of replays before concluding there were no grounds for disallowing the goal. Llorente had not used his hand to propel the ball over the line, there was nothing in particular to see, and rather than blaming the review system City would have been better advised to look at their defending when a far from prolific striker went up for a header and scored with his hip. On the second VAR decision of the match it was possible to feel much more sympathy for City. It looked as though Raheem Sterling had scored a winning goal, and with barely seconds remaining his third of the game had been celebrated as such. No offside flag had been raised against the scorer or Sergio Agüero, and the referee had not been besieged by Spurs players complaining about the latter’s position. The reason for all that was that Agüero had been only marginally offside, and his transgression was difficult to see in real time. This is where VAR either comes into its own, or takes on a sinister aspect, depending on your point of view. The referee was told he may like to take another look before awarding the goal, and on doing so he spotted Agüero’s fractional infringement in the buildup. Welcome to the modern world. The debate about whether VAR was simply doing its job and working as expected or sticking its nose in to undermine the referee’s authority on the pitch is sure to be a feature of next season, when it will be introduced in the Premier League. There is also a debate about whether goals should be disallowed for narrow offsides when the attacker was more or less in line and not obviously seeking to gain an illegal advantage, because there are more such borderline cases than may be imagined and VAR has the ability to spot them all. Christian Eriksen had it exactly right when he said he felt like the luckiest man in the world when VAR overturned the goal decision. It was his mistake that had presented City with the ball at a stage in the game when Spurs were defending too deep without an outlet upfield to relieve the pressure, and he was lucky because he knew a less avoidable error by Agüero had come to his rescue. It therefore follows that City were unlucky, which minus the swearwords was what Fernandinho had to say about VAR after the game. Yet technology is not only here, it is here to stay and the game cannot be picky about where and when it is applied. Without VAR City would be through to a Champions League semi-final, and rather than dancing on the pitch at the end Mauricio Pochettino would be pointing to a replay of the winning goal and claiming Spurs had been robbed, which they demonstrably would have been. That would not have been just unlucky, it would have been unsatisfactory.<doc-sep>
Spurs will now face Ajax for a place in the Champions League final after an incredible night of football at the Etihad Stadium. Going into the game with a crucial 1-0 lead following Son Heung-min's goal in the first leg, the Lilywhites managed to sneak through on away goals following a night of drama in Manchester. Pep Guardiola's team found themselves 3-2 ahead on the night after a stunning first 21 minutes, although that was still not enough to send them through due to Son's away goals. However, Sergio Aguero then put his side on course for the last four just before the hour mark with a powerful drive to beat Hugo Lloris after some brilliant play by Kevin De Bruyne. Then it really started to get interesting in the final 20 minutes as Spurs scored once again through Fernando Llorente. As the Spaniard went off to celebrate in front of the visiting support, the players were given an anxious wait to see if the goal would stand with the referee consulting VAR. Thankfully for Pochettino and Spurs, it counted. There was then even more drama in stoppage time as Raheem Sterling looked to have sent City through as he found the bottom corner, only for the goal to be chalked off with Aguero deemed to be offside as he collected Bernardo Silva's ball. That sparked jubilant scenes in the away end and the fans even came up with a brilliant VAR chant to wind the opposing supporters up. "VAR My Lord VAR..." sung the fans after the team managed to seal a semi-final tie against Ajax later this month. With some huge VAR calls in both quarter-final ties against Man City, Pochettino and his side will be hoping it doesn't get so tense in the next round as they bid to book a final spot in Madrid at the start of June. Keep up to date with the latest Tottenham Hotspur news, features and exclusives from football.london via our free WhatsApp service . Text NEWS to 07776197989 and then add the number to your phone contacts book as spurs dot london (case sensitive, with spaces) to receive daily updates and breaking news from Alasdair Gold and the team on Spurs. Your phone number won't be shared with any other members of the group. Click here for more information on the service.