Ian Holloway blames EU for VAR controversy

The European Union has been blamed for many of the serious problems in British society, including the power of vacuum cleaners and the shape of bananas, and a new charge must now be added: football’s handball rule.

The former Queens Park Rangers manager Ian Holloway has bizarrely claimed that the EU is responsible for Gabriel Jesus's late goal for Manchester City against Tottenham being disallowed.

The strike was dramatically chalked off after a VAR check established that City's Aymeric Laporte had handled the ball. Holloway, seemingly unaware of the law changes instituted by Ifab, the International Football Association Board, has no doubt where responsibility lies.

“I don’t think that’s our boys making up that new change of law,” he told The Debate on Sky Sports. “I think that’s people telling us what we should do with our game. Now, they should stop doing that. I hope we get out of Brexit, because that’s what we all voted for, and sort that out, because you cannot have someone telling us how to do our own game.”

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Ifab’s five members comprise the English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish FAs and Fifa, which represents its other football associations. The Premier League’s VAR hub in Stockley Park is not – or at least not yet – being controlled from Brussels.

(Guardian services)