Pau López Guardiola

The defender is on the opposite side of both the attacker and the ball. How exactly was he supposed to intervene in that play legally without going through the attacker or committing a foul? On nearly every set piece, there are attacking players in offside positions, or players who move offside during the action. What criteria are being applied to determine obstruction when the player in question is on the opposite side of both the delivery and the ball? If this is enough to nullify a goal, then nearly every set piece involving an attacker in an offside position should be reviewed frame by frame until a reason is found to disallow it. I’m sure every club feels it has suffered from officiating at different points this season, but my responsibility is to my club and my team. Our players and coaches have fought incredibly hard in what has already been a memorable season. They deserve better. Our fans deserve better. The integrity of the league deserves better. If this competition is going to be decided fairly and equally, the standard of officiating simply has to improve. There is far too much at stake for VAR interventions that feel this subjective and arbitrary.

The PK save will be hard to forget, but my lasting memory of Gonzalo at Castellón is from the year we got promoted. After preseason, our coach was nearly in full-blown panic. “Are you sure? I don’t think we can get promoted with this level of goalkeeping.” I think his exact words were: “I want to get promoted. This is going to cost us promotion.” Gonzalo hadn’t had a great preseason. And as confident as I was in him, the noise around the club was loud. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t test me. One night I was waiting on a callback from the agent of a goalkeeper in MLS, the one they had begged me to look at. It was 4 a.m. in Spain. I looked over and Oscar was asleep, completely ignoring me. I got bored and took one more look at the data. The same numbers that led us to put Gonzalo on our shortlist. It wasn’t close. Gonzalo's numbers were still strong. The other goalkeeper, the one they had begged me to consider ranked well below average - and he likely wanted 3x the salary. I remember saying, “What are we even doing here Oscar" and closing the laptop. The coaches were reacting to a few training sessions and a handful of preseason games. Humans love telling themselves stories to make sense of small samples. But we had enough data. Gonzalo was going to be good for us. I was sure of it. I closed the laptop, got a few hours of sleep, and told the coach the next day, “We have enough data. He’s good enough.” Someone might have said, “he’s short, he’s struggling with crosses.” I probably answered, “Unless he got shorter since last season, we’ll be fine.” The best part? That same coach just signed Gonzalo at his new club. Looking back, I’m actually glad my resolve was tested, even if just briefly. It gave me even more belief in the process we use and confidence that we’ll be fine going forward. Players will come and go, but if we stay true to what we believe and keep working to improve every day, I’m confident we’ll succeed.