VAR controversy deepens as Liverpool exit Champions League against PSG

Liverpool’s Champions League exit was decided as much by a monitor review as by a missed chance. At Anfield, referee Maurizio Mariani first pointed to the spot for a challenge by Willian Pacho on Alexis Mac Allister, then changed the decision after VAR official Marco di Bello sent him to the pitchside screen. UEFA later said Pacho had challenged the ball fairly and committed no foul, and Liverpool fell 2-0 on the night, 4-0 on aggregate.

The same pairing had already tested the system in Paris. In the first leg on 8 April 2026, UEFA’s own VAR explanations recorded another Liverpool penalty being overturned, with Paris Saint-Germain judged to have defended fairly. Together, the two calls have turned one tie into a credibility test for VAR, not just a grievance over a single eliminated side.

Arne Slot did little to hide his frustration, but he also framed the issue as part of a season-long pattern. He said he was “not surprised” by the overturn and said “so many decisions have gone against” Liverpool this season. Sky Sports also reported him saying that if the referee had not given the penalty, VAR would not have intervened. Ibrahima Konate called the call a “clear penalty” and said scoring it would have changed the tie.

There was another side to Liverpool’s exit, though, and it was not official review. Sky Sports reported that Liverpool generated 1.92 expected goals against PSG at Anfield and did not score. Across the Champions League before elimination, Liverpool scored 24 goals from 27.8 expected goals, the biggest underperformance among the quarter-finalists. In the Premier League, by contrast, Liverpool’s goals total was only 0.65 below xG, suggesting the finishing problem in Europe was sharper than the league numbers implied.

UEFA has begun publishing selected technical explanations for VAR decisions in the 2025/26 Champions League, including both Liverpool-PSG overturns, in an effort to make the logic behind reviews more visible. That transparency arrives as VAR remains divisive in England. BBC Sport reported that Premier League clubs were due to vote on scrapping it at their annual general meeting on 6 June, even as the league has argued that VAR improved key decision accuracy from 82% to 96% this season.

Liverpool are not new to the argument. BBC Sport has previously highlighted other high-profile VAR controversies involving the club, including the 2023 incident at Tottenham that led to Darren England and Daniel Cook being sidelined after a major mistake. Against that backdrop, the PSG tie did not just end Liverpool’s European run. It added another data point to a bigger debate over whether VAR is correcting football, or merely making its most expensive moments harder to trust.