VAR officials may well have made a big mistake when allowing referee Paul Tierney’s decision to award Harry Kane a penalty to stand in Tottenham Hotspur’s match this weekend.
On Saturday, Spurs hosted Everton in the Premier League looking to keep themselves within touching distance of first place with another win in front of their fans.
In the end, they managed to do just this with second-half goals from Kane and Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, which were enough to seal a 2-0 win over the Toffees.
However, to open the scoring, their star striker managed to draw a foul from England teammate Jordan Pickford in a fashion that could be viewed as rather dubious.
Indeed, when the Everton goalkeeper spilt the ball, Kane quickly nipped in to touch the ball before hurling himself to the ground. The referee pointed to the spot, but it wasn’t exactly the most nailed-on penalty you will ever see.
TIF Thoughts on Harry Kane and Spurs…
It seems as though some members of the media also thought the penalty should not have been awarded. For instance, pundit Chris Sutton consequently labelled Kane as the ‘King of the Divers’, claiming that he ‘initiated the contact’ and was already on his way down before Pickford came in to get the ball.
For Spurs already this season, the Englishman has already been handed the chance to score from the spot on five occasions (scoring three and missing two), so Kane and his teammates certainly know how to win a big call in their favour.
There’s little doubting the goal played a huge part in the match. Indeed, the scores were all level at that stage of the game and Everton had missed some key opportunities earlier in the match. So it certainly was a vital moment when the referee opted to hand Tottenham this controversial penalty, with VAR not opting to intervene.
There was nothing contentious about it as far as I’m concerned. A 100% certain penalty!
Bore off. Stone wall pen. No Everton players complained