30 September 2023.
I still remember this one.
Liverpool went to Tottenham knowing a victory would take them top of the Premier League after Manchester City had lost earlier in the day.
Instead, we got one of the strangest and most frustrating games I can remember watching as a Liverpool supporter.
Looking back three years later, I honestly still struggle to believe how many things went against Liverpool that afternoon.
It wasn’t just one decision.
It was decision after decision.
And the worst of them was the one that should never have been allowed to happen.
Luis Díaz’s goal
Liverpool thought they had taken the lead when Luis Díaz raced through onto Mohamed Salah’s pass and finished brilliantly.
The flag went up for offside.
At first, you could accept that the officials had made a decision.
That’s what VAR was supposed to be there for.
Except VAR didn’t correct it.
Darren England checked the incident but mistakenly believed the on-field decision had been to award the goal. He therefore told referee Simon Hooper “check complete” without realising that the goal had actually been ruled out.
PGMOL later admitted that a “significant human error” had occurred and that Díaz’s goal should have been awarded.
That wasn’t an interpretation.
It wasn’t one of those handball decisions where supporters can argue about the laws for days.
Díaz was onside.
The goal should have counted.
And VAR failed to do the one thing it was there to do.
Then everything else happened
If that had been the only controversy, it would still have been an awful afternoon.
But it wasn’t.
Curtis Jones was sent off after a VAR review of his challenge on Yves Bissouma. The referee had initially shown him a yellow card before changing it to red after watching the incident again.
Liverpool were down to ten men.
Yet somehow they kept going.
Tottenham eventually took the lead through Son Heung-min, but Liverpool refused to collapse.
Cody Gakpo equalised in first-half stoppage time after a lovely move involving Virgil van Dijk.
And then came another huge blow.
Gakpo injured himself while scoring and had to be replaced at half-time.
Liverpool were already fighting against ten men, had lost one of their attacking players and had seen a perfectly good goal taken away from them.
But they kept fighting.
Then Jota was sent off
Diogo Jota had come on for Gakpo.
Within 90 seconds of each other, he received two yellow cards.
Liverpool were down to nine men.
At that point, surely there was no way they were going to get anything from the game.
Except they nearly did.
That’s what makes this match so remarkable.
Tottenham had the numerical advantage and piled pressure on Liverpool, but Alisson produced two brilliant saves to keep his team alive.
Liverpool defended.They ran.They blocked.They fought for every ball.
They were hanging on, but they were still hanging on.
And somehow the clock kept ticking.
Then came the final punch
Six minutes of stoppage time had been added.
Liverpool were almost there.
Then, with virtually the last kick of the game, Joel Matip turned a Pedro Porro cross into his own net.
Tottenham 2-1 Liverpool.
I remember just sitting there thinking: How on earth has that happened?
Liverpool had gone from potentially going top of the league to losing a match they had every right to feel aggrieved about.
The Premier League’s own match report confirms the sequence: Jones sent off, Díaz’s goal wrongly disallowed, Jota dismissed and Matip’s own goal deciding the game in the sixth minute of stoppage time.
The part I still find incredible
For me, the Díaz decision will always be the biggest talking point.
Not because Liverpool were guaranteed to win if the goal had stood.
We don’t know that.
Football doesn’t work like that.
But the goal should have been given.
That’s not my opinion. PGMOL said it themselves.
The later release of the VAR audio made the whole thing even more bizarre. It showed that the VAR had actually checked the offside but failed to understand that the on-field decision had been to disallow the goal. Once play restarted, the officials believed they could no longer intervene.
It’s difficult to imagine a more basic VAR communication failure.
And Liverpool paid the price.
Klopp was right about one thing
After the match, Jürgen Klopp said he had never been more proud of his team and described the circumstances as the most unfair he had experienced.
I completely understood that.Forget the result for a minute.Look at what Liverpool actually did.They lost Jones.They had a goal wrongly ruled out.
They conceded to Son.They lost Gakpo to injury.They lost Jota.They were down to nine men.
And they still almost walked away with a point.
That tells you something about that Liverpool team.
They weren’t perfect that afternoon, but the mentality was incredible.
And that’s probably why I still remember this match so clearly.
Three years later, the result is in the record books.
Tottenham 2-1 Liverpool.
But anybody who watched it knows there was so much more to the story than the scoreline.
A legitimate Luis Díaz goal was wrongly ruled out.
PGMOL admitted significant human error.Two Liverpool players were sent off.Gakpo was injured.Alisson kept Liverpool alive.
Matip’s late own goal finally broke them.
It was one of those afternoons where you just wanted the final whistle to come.
And when it finally did, I was absolutely raging.
Three years on, I still am.
30 September 2023.
One of the strangest, most controversial and unforgettable afternoons of the Klopp era.
And for Liverpool supporters, one that is very difficult to forget.
Jamie (The Kopite View)
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