The Premier League’s Key Match Incidents (KMI) Panel has reached a final decision on the controversial Amad penalty incident during Manchester United’s 2-2 draw with Bournemouth.
Penalty saga
United took the lead at the Vitality Stadium through Bruno Fernandes, who converted from the spot-kick. Matheus Cunha won the penalty, having been brought down inside the area by Alex Jimenez.
The Red Devils strongly felt they deserved a second penalty after Amad appeared to have been shoved by Adrien Truffert, who placed two hands on him. Referee Stuart Atwell was very close by and simply waved on despite United’s passionate appeals. To make matters worse for Michael Carrick and his players, Bournemouth went down the other end in the same passage of play and scored, making it 1-1.
That was a crucial moment, as United went from potentially taking a 2-0 lead to being pulled back to 1-1.
United restored their advantage as Fernandes’ wicked delivery was turned into the back of his own net by James Hill. But there was another late twist when Harry Maguire was given his marching orders and the Cherries were awarded a penalty for a last-man challenge on Evanilson.
The strange thing was that the foul looked very similar to the one committed against Amad earlier in the match. Eli Junior Kroupi made no mistake to draw the hosts level and ensure the spoils were shared.
After the final whistle, a furious Fernandes slammed the officiating, insisting that both penalty incidents were identical and the referee should have either given both or neither. These sentiments were echoed by an equally furious Carrick.
United are believed to have lodged an official complaint with to the head of referees at PGMO.
Now, the Premier League’s Key Match Incidents (KMI) Panel have ruled that the referee and VAR were correct not to penalise Truffert.
Final verdict
The BBC reports that the KMI Panel produced a split 3:2 vote against a penalty being given on the pitch.
The KMI Panel note that “whilst Truffert runs a risk, the contact made was not impactful and therefore below the high threshold for a foul.”
But two panellists said that the action was “non-footballing and a penalty should have been awarded.”
Unfortunately for United, the unanimous decision was that the non-VAR intervention was “in keeping with the high threshold for VAR overturns.”
The KMI Panel backed the Cunha penalty 5:0, stating that “Jimenez clearly pulls the shirt of Cunha in a non-footballing manner.”
The red card and foul by Maguire on Evanilson received majority backing, with a 4:1 ratio in favour of the referee making the right call.
Featured image Warren Little via Getty Images
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1 comment
Kmi clearly don’t know what there talking about then as a 2 hand push is a foul clearly whiten in the rules aswell