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Carlton Cole has slammed FCSB for allowing West Ham United to score their first goal against them in their 3-0 Europa Conference League on Thursday night.
Pablo Fornals scored the first of his two goals in the 40th minute after a stunning long-range pass by Ben Johnson, who played the Spaniard in under no pressure from the Romanians.
As shown by BT Sport, 26-year-old Fornals was offside before he scored his goal, leading to comments being made by Joe Cole at half time as VAR would have probably ruled it out if it was in use in Bucharest.
“You can’t make a case for the linesman,” said Joe Cole said at half time on BT Sport 3 on Thursday night [3 November, 08:50pm].
BT Sport host Lynsey Hipgrave said: “Thankfully there’s no VAR in this one.”
Cole continued: “There’s no VAR in the Conference [League] at the moment but listen, that’s how football used to be and you used to get ones like that.
Carlton Cole then interjected. He said: “I’d be fuming if I was [the FCSB] manager and that ball [from Johnson] wasn’t cut out at the source for him to play that ball.”
Offside
Let’s be honest, Fornals was offside.
It wasn’t even that close and the linesman should have spotted that the Spanish attacker was beyond the last line of defence when Johnson played that ball.
But we’re not complaining.
We’ve had our fair share of VAR decisions go against us since that was introduced but the video technology isn’t being used in the Europa Conference League as of yet.
It was kind of like a blast from the past, scoring a goal that was offside and then that was it. No checks. No anxious wait. Nothing but living in the moment and those West Ham fans in Bucharest went crazy without consequence up in the gods at FCSB’s stadium.
From our point of view, it was a great goal.
Johnson’s pass was exquisite, Fornals’ touch, control and finish were amazing when he was under such pressure from the FCSB defence.
It’s one of our best goals so far this season, easily.