'I will be punished' - Marco Silva rages at 'unbelievable' controversy in Fulham loss to Chelsea
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Credit: TNT Sports
Ben Palmer
Sat 30 August 2025 15:58, UK
Marco Silva could not contain his fury when interviewed following Fulham’s 2-0 loss to Chelsea.
The Whites started the brighter of the two in a meeting between West London’s premier clubs, and Josh King netted his first senior goal for Fulham after 21 minutes.
However, that goal was ruled out after a VAR intervention, deeming Rodrigo Muniz’s spin away from Trevoh Chalobah as a “careless challenge”.
Following that decision, the Blues began to take control of the game and made the most of referee Rob Jones’ lax timekeeping skills by scoring in the 10th minute of added time at the end of the first half after eight minutes were added on.
From there, things only seemed to go from bad to worse for Fulham as in the second half, Chelsea were awarded a penalty for a Ryan Sessegnon handball.
That decision in and of itself was the correct one, but Jones and the VAR team had failed to spot a foul on Alex Iwobi in the build-up that mirrored Muniz’s incident earlier, and a potential handball from Joao Pedro.
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Silva cut a frustrated figure on Fulham’s touchline, to say the least.
The Portuguese manager attempted to confront Jones about the decision at half-time, but was waved away by the referee.
After the match, Silva said in an interview with TNT Sports (30 August, 3.03pm): “All the decisions from the VAR, all the decisions from the referee made a massive impact in the game.
“Second half was not the level I would like to see our team.
I told them you cannot control all the decisions against us.
“How you disallow a goal like that [King’s] is unbelievable.
Unbelievable.
For us and I think for all the world it was something unbelievable to disallow that goal.
I want to be on the bench on the next game, I don’t want to pay fines.”
Adding fuel to the fire, football finance expert Stefan Borson posted a video of a similar incident from a meeting between Man United and Aston Villa, where Bruno Fernandes had stamped on Ezri Konsa and yet was awarded a penalty, rather than being penalised as Muniz was.
Football Insider Verdict
As Silva pointed out in his post-match interview, VAR does not and should not exist to “re-referee the games”.
The introduction of the technology came in as a way of getting rid of the clear and obvious errors that previously existed.
And yet, ironically, one could argue that VAR are adding to the amount of clear and obvious errors that exists.
Sadly, Fulham will, at best, receive an apology from PGMOL and within a week the incidents will be forgotten about, only to be replaced by yet another set of mistakes by VAR.
The Premier League should be embarrassed.
The most-watched league in the world is no longer defined by the quality on the pitch; instead, it is a case of who can be the beneficiaries of refereeing and VAR mistakes.
Fulham may have gone on to lose against Chelsea even if King’s goal had stood, but we will never know due to VAR’s insistence on involving itself in moments where it simply isn’t necessary.