Somehow, Atletico Madrid experience a different way to lose to Real Madrid in the Champions League . The same old story, given this shootout made it six eliminations from six meetings, but with a new twist.
And what a twist. The key decision felt a contortion of how the game's rules should actually work, as Julio Alvarez's penalty was disallowed for a perceived double touch.
Atleti consequently shouldn't feel any of the desperate fatalism they did with Sergio Ramos ' header in the 2014 final or the penalty shootout of 2016. There should only be searing injustice. To go out because of a virtually imperceptible touch, that gives no advantage to the kicker, is an utter absurdity.
It is a vintage case of the rules being divorced from the reality of how the game is played.
Put bluntly, what player is going to try and touch a penalty twice? It makes it much harder to score. Anyone could tell you that. There's no advantage, and arguably only disadvantage.
That's before you even get to fair questions about how quickly they came to the decision. Despite social media noise about sensors and other tech, Uefa have confirmed it was just VAR used. They ruled on Julio Alvarez's penalty in what looked like less than a minute, even though it was virtually impossible to perceive contact from multiple watches of many camera angles.
Julian Alvarez hits the penalty which was later ruled out (Getty Images)
Alvarez slipped before watching the ball hit the net (AP)
It was certainly not "clear and obvious", although the threshold for intervention is whether it was a factual error. It's still impossible to say it was. The replays we have seen so far are too jittery between shots to conclude there was another touch, and the ball doesn't appear to change trajectory. Sure, it's possible to perceive it might have, but that's impossible to factually say due to how blurred the images are. What might appear to be movement could actually be a blur - literally. That isn't clear. And, by then, you really are getting down to scrutinising slow-motion images repeatedly. At which point you really have to stand back and wonder what the point and principles of all these rules are? What would the most logical outcome be?
Thibaut Courtois later said he "felt" that Alvarez had touched the ball twice. Diego Simeone , ruefully laughing with disbelief, asked journalists in the press conference to raise their hands if they felt the same. Many were still trying to judge.
The infinitesimal margins seem all the worse given the massive cost of missing a penalty in a shootout. It dramatically increases the chances of going out. The punishment just does not fit the nature of the offence, if you can even call it an offence.
This is just the wrong way for a game to be settled. The penalty should be retaken, at worst, if even that.
A response already being made to such arguments is that you can't have different rules for penalties in normal play as you have for shootouts. That's not quite true since the relevant law states "a penalty taker cannot touch the ball twice before another player makes contact. If this happens, the referee must award an indirect free-kick to the opposing team". Another player can't run in here, since it's a single-kick scenario. What's more, there's no capacity for an indirect free. The law is already being extrapolated.
Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois later said he felt Alvarez had hit the ball twice (AP)
Referee Szymon Marciniak gestures as the penalty is ruled out following a VAR review (Getty Images)
In any case, it would be fine because the rule doesn't really make sense in normal play, either.
Again, who is going to try and double-tap it? There's no advantage. It's a farcical reason to outright disallow a goal.
An extreme theoretical view on this is that a player could feasibly chip the ball up and volley it past the goalkeeper, or similar. It just wouldn't happen but, if it did, the intent is obvious. That is something that could be brought into the rule.
There would usually be a fair counter-argument here about how getting into judgments on "intent" is a slippery slope, but that is for live play, and moments such as fast slide tackles. It is a lot easier to judge for a clean set-piece like a penalty.
Atletico Madrid's English midfielder #04 Conor Gallagher scores the opening goal (AFP via Getty Images)
Atletico Madrid's English midfielder #04 Conor Gallagher celebrates (AFP via Getty Images)
This case is obviously always going to be binary. We're either going to see moments like Alvarez's, or absurdly theoretical attempts like chipping it up, that just wouldn't happen.
It's impossible to even perceive other ways in which this might work. That alone shows how badly this rule works.
It should now be reviewed and probably will be, given the likely backlash. That will be too late for Atletico, though. That should double the frustration, to say the least.
