Manchester United penalty vs PSG: Uefa explain why referee was correct to award spot kick

Uefa has confirmed that referee Damir Skomina was correct to award Manchester United a dramatic stoppage time penalty against Paris Saint-Germain in the second-leg of their Champions League last 16 tie on Wednesday night.

The decision to penalise PSG defender Presnel Kimpembe for handball was met with derision from manager Thomas Tuchel (“no logic”), injured forward Neymar (“a disgrace”) and even former Manchester United players.

“It’s not a penalty in a million years,” said a dumbfounded Michael Owen in the BT Sport studio.

After initially awarding a corner, Skomina was alerted to the incident by the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) and then spent several minutes assessing footage before awarding the spot kick.

Marcus Rashford’s calm finish gave United a memorable 3-1 victory to send them through to the Champions League quarter-finals and Uefa has now confirmed the result was justified, according to their protocols.

Uefa statement

The VAR, after checking various different angles available to him, recommended to the referee an on-field review following the penalty area incident.

Given that the referee did not recognise the incident clearly during live play (referred to as serious missed incident in the VAR protocol) an on-field review was conducted.

Following the on-field review, the referee confirmed that the distance that the ball travelled was not short and the impact could therefore not be unexpected. The defender’s arm was not close to the body, which made the defender’s body bigger thus resulting in the ball being stopped from travelling in the direction of the goal. The referee, therefore, awarded a penalty kick.

All the above-mentioned decisions were made in full compliance with the VAR protocol.