FIFA finally explain Japan goal vs Spain which knocked Germany out of World Cup

Mirror

However, FIFA have now issued an explanation on their official Twitter feed, writing: “Japan’s second goal in their 2-1 win over Spain was checked by VAR to determine if the ball had gone out of play. The video match officials used the goal line camera images to check if the ball was still partially on the line or not.

“Other cameras may offer misleading images but on the evidence available, the whole of the ball was not out of play.”

Despite their explanation, Gary Neville was instantly critical of world football’s governing body for the delay in showing their evidence. He replied: “Why don’t you allow access to the real-time angles and footage that VAR officials are looking at to broadcasters?”

Neville’s sentiments were shared by Graeme Souness on ITV Sport immediately after the game as he suggested the lack of evidence supplied around the decision left room to believe there was “something untoward”.

Souness said: “We’re getting close to an hour since the incident. The longer they don’t come up with a picture, that last bit would show me that ball is out of play.

“The longer we don’t see that picture which shows conclusively that it’s not gone out of play, you’d think there’s something untoward going on. It has to be.

“There’s 80 million Germans, right now, going mad that shows that ball didn’t go out of play. I think every TV studio, pundit, people doing your job [presenting] is waiting, why, nearly an hour later are they not showing it?”