The English refereeing body publicly acknowledged having made an error in validating a goal scored by Erling Haaland. This admission of error by the officials in charge of the match in England represents a formal confession that an incorrect decision was made during the game.
In Portugal, the video assistant referee system (VAR) was given a score of 2, on a scale that apparently evaluates the performance of this technology in refereeing decisions. This very low score indicates a significant negative assessment of the VAR's functioning in the Portuguese context.
However, despite these two public confessions of refereeing errors — one in England and another in Portugal with the VAR assessment — no team saw their points returned. The article criticizes this situation, emphasizing that saying sorry or assigning negative scores does not compensate for the sporting consequences suffered by the teams affected by erroneous decisions.
The article's title summarizes its central message: apologies and negative assessments have no practical impact on competition standings, as points lost due to refereeing errors are never reinstated, regardless of whether the competent bodies acknowledge their mistakes.
