Football Narratives

Chelsea women have just beaten Man City Women 2-1 away from home and the narrative around the game is super interesting to me in an atmosphere of criticising referees and VAR, pressure and discontent about outcomes.

1. Man City’s opening goal was offside and should not have counted. Coombs is the City player who runs across the eye-line of the Chelsea keeper at the moment the shot is struck.
2. Man City continued to play after the referee blew the whistle for a foul in which Bright was booked resulting in the ball in the Chelsea net, whilst Hampton the goalkeeper is stood motionless.
3. Chelsea scored an equaliser in the second half
4. Chelsea scored the decisive winning goal in stoppage time.

BBC coverage didn’t even contemplate or challenge the offside decision on the opening goal.

Here are two crude screenshots that show the offside player and proximity to the ball. This clearly influences the goalkeeper.

The only mention of an offside was in Cushing’s post match interview.

**Man City interim boss Nick Cushing, speaking to BBC One: **“There is a bit of frustration throughout the game for me. At half time we should come in at 2-0. Then I think with their first goal there is a tight offside.

On the disallowed goal: “There was a foul on Laura Coombs a few minutes before that and we had a counter attacking moment - our threat was coming from Kerolin and Jess Park attacking quickly in those moments and I asked for the advantage to be played.

BBC also use the language ‘disallowed goal’ for the second incident listed above. The goal was not disallowed as the play had stopped on the referee’s whistle. Disallowed goals are for when a goal is ruled out pending a decision. e.g, an offside flag, a VAR check. This is a semantic issue but drives a narrative that Man City were hard done by.

They could feel hard done by in the sense the ref didn’t play an advantage. The rules are clear If the referee plays advantage following a yellow-card offence, the card must be shown when the game next stops. However, if the offence was stopping or interfering with a promising attack, no card is shown, as the advantage allowed the promising attack to continue.

The referee could have played advantage and it could have been a goal, but the whistle did blow and some players did stop and no goal was actually disallowed, they were denied the opportunity to find out.

Here’s a screenshot of the offside call Cushing is making, marginal at best.

As the Chelsea winner goes into the goal, there is an audible groan from Brown-Finnis the co-commentator. Perhaps it’s the unique way the BBC are funded as this isn’t the first time this has happened with Chelsea scoring winning goals. I recall correctly, Oatley a primary commentator has not commentated on a Chelsea Women’s game since.

Keating the City keeper also with a defeatist mindset, interesting ahead of the 4th meeting in 12 days between these sides coming next week. Perhaps good news for Chelsea.

**Man City goalkeeper Khiara Keating speaking to BBC One: **“You always come into these games to win and do your part for the team. We held on for so long but of course it [the winning goal] was bound to happen with Chelsea, but I am proud of the team and the performance.

Perhaps if commentators and pundits remained impartial and spoke more factually the sentiment around referee’s particularly in the Women’s game where they are not yet full time and professional the discourse will not end up like the Men’s rather toxic equivalent.