Why VAR intervened on Liverpool's handball penalty

Below is a summary of the full article. Click here for the full version from BBC or go back to LFC Live.

Handball or not handball? Liverpool and Arsenal were both on the end of decisions for VAR penalties in the Champions League on Tuesday night.Liverpool fans were left utterly confused when they had a free-kick overturned to be a dropped ball, just when they thought they had a penalty against Real Madrid.But Arsenal were the beneficiaries despite a Slavia Prague handball coming about via a touch of the defender's head.Meanwhile, was Tottenham Hotspur's Brennan Johnson unlucky to be sent off against FC Copenhagen?Here's what happened.Liverpool's Dominik Szoboszlai attempted a shot on goal in the 30th minute, which was blocked by Real Madrid's Aurelien Tchouameni.Referee Istvan Kovacs gave a free-kick against the Real Madrid player for handball, an offence which appeared really close to being inside the area.It was checked by the VAR, Bastian Dankert, and when the referee jogged over to the pitchside monitor Liverpool fans inside Anfield cheered, expecting that a penalty was about to be awarded.Except that's not what was happening.

A factual decision, the position where the handball happened, would only be made by the VAR, not the referee.A referee is only sent to the monitor to judge a subjective decision, in this case handball. So by going to the screen, the referee was overturning his decision to give the handball.But how did we get from a free-kick to Liverpool to restarting with a dropped ball for goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois?Because the handball factually took place inside the box, it's a penalty.

If the handball had been confirmed as outside the area, the free-kick would have stood regardless of being right or wrong.It's maybe surprising that it was overturned in a Uefa competition, but it was the correct outcome. Kovacs likely felt Tchouameni's arm was further out, but when the ball hit the hand of the Real Madrid player he had it very close to the body, with no horizontal barrier being created.Because it's an overturned penalty, play restarts with the goalkeeper - effectively meaning Liverpool give up their attacking possession.The cheers of Liverpool fans turned to gasps.Arsenal were given a penalty in the 32nd minute of their game at Slavia Prague, when Lukas Provod was ruled to have handled the ball after a corner was played into the box.The ball came off Provod's head and on to the ball, so why did the VAR get involved?It's very unlikely that this would have been a VAR penalty in the Premier League, but there is a distinction to be made between deliberately heading the ball and a deflection.If a defender gets a firm contact on a header and nods it against their own raised arm, that shouldn't be a penalty.But if there's negligible contact, so it's more of a deflection on to an arm which is above the shoulder, that creates a high risk of a spot-kick being awarded.