Punter denied £9,500 accumulator payout due to VAR offside error

A football fan who was denied a £9,500 accumulator payout due to a VAR offside error has had made a desperate plea to raise the winnings. "Surely the boys will chip in and pay this out," writes Ryan Hall to Tottenham Hotspur player James Maddison on X (formerly Twitter).

The message is a desperate plea to raise the winnings he should have been awarded as part of a 'bet builder' accumulator sequence for the Spurs v Liverpool Premier League game on Saturday evening.

Instead, Ryan from Cleater Moor in Cumbria, lost the bet and with it the chance to scoop almost £10k. As part of his 950/1 acca, Ryan predicted Reds forward Luis Diaz would score and the Colombian did, but the perfectly legitimate goal was wrongly ruled out for offside, LancsLive reports.

It was the result of an embarrassing mix-up by the match refereeing officials and VAR team. The on field ref Simon Hooper had ruled the goal out, but it was referred to VAR Darren England, who wrongly thought the on field decision was "goal".

After checking the footage, Diaz was clearly onside so England ruled "check complete" not realising he was effectively ruling out the goal and awarding a free kick to Tottenham. As soon as the free kick was taken, the officials realised the huge "human error", but it was too late to bring play back.

Tottenham won the game 2-1 following a Joel Matip own goal deep into added time, with Liverpool down to nine men. Posting a screenshot of his £10 stake, Ryan correctly predicated Cody Gakpo and Heung-Min Son would score and that Yves Bissouma, Iyenoma Udogie and Alexis Mac Allister would be booked.

He captioned the post: " Surely someone needs to pay me out for this!" He tagged in Sky Football, the Prmier League, Sky Sports Premier League and Bet365.

He followed his original post up by tagging England international Maddison, who played for Spurs in their fortunate win. Ryan wrote: " @madders10 Good win today bro and great performance, but lucky though eh so surely the boys will chip in and pay this out, cheers pal and great game again."

PGMOL later released a statement admitting to their "significant" mistake, which left Liverpool fans, players and manager Jurgen Klopp incensed. They said: "PGMOL acknowledge a significant human error occurred," the statement read. "PGMOL will conduct a full review."

"The goal by Luiz Diaz was disallowed for offside by the on-field team of match officials. This was a clear and obvious factual error and should have resulted in the goal being awarded through VAR intervention, however, the VAR failed to intervene."