Gözübüyük has to withdraw twice from spectacular Liverpool


Wednesday, April 13, 2022 at 10:53 PM• Dominic Mostert • Last update: 22:56

Liverpool qualified for the semi-finals of the Champions League on Wednesday evening. After last week’s 1-3 win over Benfica, a spectacular 3-3 draw in front of the home crowd followed. The Dutch arbitration led by Serdar Gözübüyük played a leading role. Four goals from Benfica were disallowed, but two of them were awarded after studying the images by video referee Pol van Boekel. In the final phase, a goal from Liverpool was (rightly) disallowed.

The first serious opportunity came from a diagonal long shot from Éverton, which sailed past. Benfica needed goals and played a lot more offensively than in the away match against Ajax in the eighth final, but Liverpool still took the lead. After twenty minutes, Kostas Tsimikas delivered a turning corner, after which Ibrahima Konaté jumped up between three defenders and headed through the ground into the right corner. Last week, Konaté also opened the scoring in Lisbon.

This time the defender formed a central duo with Joël Matip. Jürgen Klopp made several changes compared to the first leg: Virgil van Dijk, Fabinho, Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané, among others, took place on the bench. Klopp hoped the B-choice would be enough not to get into trouble. Benfica, however, did not give up and scored shortly after the opening goal. After preparatory work by Éverton, Darwin Núñez tipped the ball over Alisson Becker.

The goal did not go through. Video referee Pol van Boekel noticed offside and advised Gözübüyük to reject the goal. Nine minutes later, the arbitration again played a key role. Diogo Gonçalves served Gonçalo Ramos behind the defence, after which Ramos rounded off with a hard shot into the left corner from the box. Van Boekel needed a minute to analyze the images and eventually concluded that there was no question of offside.

In the final phase of the first half, Naby Keita fired the ball just wide, leaving it at 1-1 in the first half. Nine minutes after the break, Liverpool regained the lead. After a deep pass by Keïta, neither Díaz nor the outgoing Vlachodimos could control the ball, which ended up at the feet of Diogo Jota after Jan Vertonghen’s poor defense. That enabled the detached Firmino to tap in the 2-1 just in front of the goal. It went 3-1 not much later as Firmino escaped the attention of the defense and successfully extended a free kick from Tsimikas.

Eighteen minutes before the end, Van Boekel again had to make his judgment about a possible offside situation for a goal by Benfica. With a through ball, Álex Grimaldo brought the ball to Roman Yaremchuk, who suddenly appeared in front of Alisson’s goal. The striker cleverly outplayed the keeper and finished off in an empty goal. Initially the flag of linesman Johan Balder went up, but Van Boekel gave the yes. Balder also flagged in minute 82 after a goal from Darwin, because assister João Mário would have been offside when they stormed towards the goal together. However, Van Boekel ruled that this was not the case: 3-3. Suddenly Benfica smelled blood. Darwin looked for the short corner with a volley, but ran into Alisson. Shortly before time, Joost van Zuilen, the other linesman, saw well that Salah was offside when he thought to make it 4-3. Deep into injury time, Darwin’s 3-4 was rightly rejected.