Football does not need apologies, it needs published reasoning

Key takeaways

• The Guardian reports that Enzo Maresca said Manchester City are still waiting for an apology from referees' chief Howard Webb over a decision in the 2023 Manchester derby at Old Trafford.
• The disputed passage involved Bruno Fernandes equalising while Marcus Rashford, in an offside position, ran close to the ball without touching it, which turns the case on interference rather than position.
• Offside technology can fix where a player was standing but cannot decide whether that player interfered with an opponent, and that judgement remains human and contested.
• An apology is a poor remedy because the Laws of the Game do not allow a completed match to be replayed or a result revised on the basis of refereeing error.
• The structural fix is faster, fuller publication of officiating reasoning, so that disputes are settled at the time rather than carried for years.

What Maresca has actually raised

According to the Guardian, Maresca argued that Manchester United are in no position to object to a contested decision in Sunday's derby, because Manchester City have never received an apology for one that shaped the same fixture three years ago. He was Pep Guardiola's assistant at the time and watched the game from the City bench. The remarks were made in the build-up to a Carabao Cup tie against Norwich City; the selection for that match is not something this article can state.

The substance is narrower than the noise around it. Maresca's claim, as reported, is not that referees are biased but that an error was never formally acknowledged. That is a complaint about process, not about competence. It is worth separating the two, because English football routinely collapses them: a club says the system failed to explain itself, and the reply is that the club is making excuses. Those are different arguments, and only one of them can be fixed by institutional design.

Why a three-year-old goal is back in circulation

Old decisions resurface when new ones land in the same fixture. A contested moment in this weekend's derby created the frame, and a manager with direct memory of 2023 supplied the precedent. That is a predictable pattern rather than a scandal: without a public, dated record that closes each disputed incident, every controversy remains available for reuse.

This is the real cost of an accountability model built on private contrition. If the response to a significant error is a phone call to the aggrieved club, then only the club knows whether the call came. Three years later, the absence of that call becomes a claim that cannot be checked, and the argument restarts from zero. A published determination — right, wrong, or unresolvable — would at least give both sides the same document to argue from. It would not make anyone happier about the result. It would make the dispute finite.

The background a newcomer needs

Offside, under Law 11 of the Laws of the Game written by IFAB, is not an offence in itself. Being in an offside position is legal. A player is only penalised if, at the moment the ball is played by a teammate, they become involved in active play: by touching or playing the ball, by interfering with an opponent, or by gaining an advantage from a rebound or deflection.

"Interfering with an opponent" is the clause that matters here. It covers obstructing the line of vision, challenging for the ball, or making an obvious action that clearly affects an opponent's ability to play it. Each of those requires a judgement about what a defender or goalkeeper could see and do. The Guardian's account of 2023 describes a teammate in an offside position running close to a through ball that another player then struck. No touch means the question was never about millimetres.

The video assistant referee works to a high bar on subjective calls, intervening only for a clear and obvious error. Positional offside is treated as factual and checked precisely; interference is not. That asymmetry explains why one type of offside argument ends quickly and the other never does.

Who carries the cost

Clubs carry it first, and unevenly. A side that believes it lost points to an unacknowledged error has no route to redress, because Law 5 makes the referee's decisions on points of fact final, and no competition rule permits a finished match to be replayed because officiating was wrong. The grievance therefore has nowhere to go except into press conferences.

Officials carry it too, and arguably worse. When the only visible form of accountability is an apology, referees are placed in a position where the choice is between appearing to admit fault and appearing to stonewall. Neither serves them. A system that published reasoning as a matter of course would reframe the same conversation as explanation rather than confession.

Supporters carry the residue. A decision that is never formally resolved becomes folklore, and folklore does not decay. It gets retold at every subsequent meeting of the two clubs, hardening into a belief about institutional favour that no individual official can answer.

Where informed people disagree

There is a serious case against more transparency, and it deserves stating. Publishing detailed reasoning on contested calls invites line-by-line litigation of every judgement, gives clubs a document to campaign with, and may push officials towards defensible decisions rather than correct ones. Referees' bodies in several countries have made versions of this argument, and the concern about chilling on-field judgement is not frivolous.

There is also disagreement about whether apologies help at all. One view holds that acknowledgement is basic professional courtesy and costs nothing. The other holds that it is an empty gesture that raises expectations it cannot meet, since no apology returns a point. The reported exchange illustrates the second position neatly: the demand has outlived any practical benefit it could have delivered.

A third disagreement concerns interference itself. Some argue the clause is too vague to officiate consistently and should be tightened so that an offside player near the ball is penalised by default. Others argue that such a rule would punish irrelevant presence and distort attacking play. Both positions are held in good faith.

What this means in practice

For the clubs, very little changes this week. The derby result stands, whatever anyone concludes about it, and attention moves to a cup tie. The Carabao Cup is a single-elimination competition run by the EFL, without replays, and its officiating arrangements in the earlier rounds are not uniform: video review has historically depended on the facilities available at the host ground, and the specific arrangements for this tie are not stated in the source.

For the wider game, the practical implication is that the interference clause, not the offside line, is now the main source of unresolved disputes. Semi-automated technology has largely settled the geometry. It has no view on whether a runner distracted a defender. Investment in ever-finer positional accuracy will not reduce the number of arguments, because the arguments have moved.

What to watch next

Watch whether any formal response follows. Whether PGMOL addresses the 2023 incident publicly, through its review programme or otherwise, is not known, and it may reasonably decline to reopen a case from three seasons ago.

Watch, too, for rule-making movement. IFAB reviews the Laws annually, and pressure to clarify interference has been building across several leagues. Any redraft that narrows the clause would reduce the space in which this kind of grievance forms.

Finally, watch the language clubs use. A shift from demanding apologies to demanding published reasoning would be a sign that the argument has matured from complaint into reform.

Frequently asked questions

Why are Manchester City still asking for an apology about a 2023 goal?

The Guardian reports that Enzo Maresca raised it this week, saying City never received an apology from referees' chief Howard Webb for a decision that shaped the 2023 Manchester derby at Old Trafford. Maresca was Pep Guardiola's assistant then. His point, as reported, was that United cannot object to contested officiating in the current fixture when an earlier error in the same fixture was never formally acknowledged.

Was the goal in the 2023 derby offside?

The Guardian's account describes Bruno Fernandes equalising while Marcus Rashford, in an offside position, ran close to the through ball without playing it. Under Law 11, an offside position alone is not an offence. The goal stood because the officials judged that Rashford did not interfere with an opponent. Whether that judgement was correct is exactly what remains disputed, and this article cannot resolve it.

Can a result be changed if a refereeing error is confirmed?

Effectively, no. Law 5 makes the referee's decisions on points of fact final, and once the match has ended those decisions cannot be revisited to alter the outcome. Competitions do not order replays because officiating was wrong. That is why an apology, even when given, is symbolic: it acknowledges the error without providing any remedy, which is a large part of why these disputes never fully close.

What is PGMOL and what is the referees' chief responsible for?

PGMOL is the body responsible for match officials in English professional football, covering appointments, training and standards. Its chief refereeing officer, Howard Webb, leads that work and fronts public communication about decisions, including televised reviews of contested incidents. The Guardian's report frames Maresca's complaint as being directed at that office. How PGMOL handles private communication with clubs after errors is not detailed in the source.

Does offside technology solve these arguments?

Only half of them. Semi-automated systems determine where players were standing when the ball was played, which settles tight positional calls quickly and consistently. They make no judgement about whether an offside player interfered with an opponent by blocking vision, challenging, or acting in a way that affected the ability to play the ball. That remains a human decision, and it is the category this dispute falls into.

Is video review used throughout the Carabao Cup?

Not uniformly in the earlier rounds. The competition is run by the EFL as a straight knockout without replays, and video review coverage has historically depended on which grounds have the necessary installation, with wider use later in the competition. The arrangements for any specific tie are set by the competition organisers, and the source material does not state what applies to the Norwich fixture.

Sources and further reading

• The Guardian, football section: the report of Maresca's remarks that this article responds to.
• IFAB, Laws of the Game: Law 11 on offside and Law 5 on the authority and finality of the referee's decisions.
• PGMOL public communications, including its televised match officials review programme, for how officiating decisions are explained after the fact.
• English Football League competition regulations, for the structure and officiating arrangements of the League Cup.