Football's demand for perfection has created the 'crazy' world where 'identical' fouls get different decisions

By Jacob Whitehead

Michael Carrick stood on the Vitality Stadium touchline on Saturday evening trying to reconcile two penalty-box grapples that looked the same, sounded the same and, according to the laws of the game, were the same. One brought a spot-kick and a 1-0 lead; the other brought only a wave-away and, 13 seconds later, a Bournemouth equaliser. Manchester United left Dorset with a 2-2 draw and a dossier of grievances already dispatched to PGMOL.

The flash-point sequence began just past the hour. Matheus Cunha cut inside Alex Jimenez, felt a two-handed tug on his shirt and hit the turf. Referee Stuart Attwell pointed to the spot; Bruno Fernandes converted. Six minutes later Amad, darting in from the opposite flank, was seized by Adrien Truffert in an almost carbon-copy hold. Attwell said play on. United’s bench erupted; within a breath Ryan Christie levelled.

Carrick, normally reluctant to rail against officials, could not hide his bemusement. “You get one, you must get the other,” he told Sky Sports. “It’s pretty much identical, two-hand grab — so either way, he’s got one wrong. To give one and not give the other… I just can’t get my head around it. It’s crazy.”

The interim United boss was equally accepting of the decision to send off Harry Maguire for a professional foul on Evanilson late on, acknowledging the defender had denied a clear scoring opportunity. Yet the symmetry of Maguire escaping censure for an earlier shove on the same striker — one of four major incidents Attwell allowed to stand without VAR intervention — underlined the inconsistency Carrick believes is warping matches.

United’s complaint to the refereeing body centres on that scatter-pattern of calls. In the 24th minute Maguire nudged Evanilson in the back as he shaped to shoot; no penalty. After 78 minutes the roles were reversed, Evanilson tumbled again, and this time Attwell did point to the spot. Between those moments came Cunha’s award and Amad’s denial. All four, slowed to a freeze-frame, carry the textbook characteristics of a foul.

PGMOL’s silence has only amplified the noise. Unlike rugby union, where referee-TMO exchanges are broadcast, football offers no window into the process. Viewers were left to guess why Truffert’s more forceful grip was judged less punishable than Jimenez’s, or why the VAR, Michael Salisbury, never asked Attwell to re-screen either incident. The league’s pride in having Europe’s lowest VAR intervention rate offers a partial answer: officials are under renewed instruction to let the on-field call stand unless a “clear and obvious” blunder stares them in the face.

But the phrase itself is elastic, and the grey area is widening. Pulling an attacker’s shirt is routinely labelled “soft” until the moment it is penalised; at set-pieces identical wrestling matches are ignored almost by tradition. Add the summer mandate to speed up play and the VAR becomes reluctant to muddy already turbulent waters.

The result is a sport trapped between two irreconcilable ambitions: absolute consistency and respect for the referee’s autonomy. Cricket can achieve the former because its decisions are binary — in or out, caught or not caught. Football’s laws are interpretative, and even PGMOL’s five-man key-match-incidents panel regularly splits 3-2 on whether an overturn was required.

United’s selective video edits — omitting Evanilson’s first tumble while highlighting Amad’s — and Bournemouth’s mirror-image cherry-picking illustrate another truth: every club calibrates memory to its own grievance. Yet Carrick’s broader point survives the spin cycle. When identical offences produce opposite outcomes inside the same match, the product risks looking arbitrary.