Man City vs Real Madrid VAR delay explained amid four-minute wait after Erling Haaland goal

Manchester City and Real Madrid were forced to wait almost four minutes before Erling Haaland's opening goal in their Champions League play-off was confirmed.

Faced with a play-off before entering the Champions League's round of 16, 2023 winners Man City were pitted against 2024 winners Real Madrid. With the first of two legs taking place in Manchester on Tuesday, it was the Spaniards who made the faster start - although without scoring a goal.

That allowed the hosts to capitalise and in a swift attacking move Haaland stabbed past Thibaut Courtois from close range. An offside verdict from referee Clement Turpin or his assistants was withheld as they allowed VAR to have the final say.

"There's many different phases of play they will check but it is the last one, when Gvardiol chests it back. Is Haaland behind the ball? From my first impression from the first replay it looks like he is just behind the ball. This goal will be given," former official Mark Clattenburg explained in his role for broadcaster Amazon Prime.

Man City were then plunged into a three-minute-and-fifty-second wait before it was signalled the goal was to stand - an awfully long time for a competition that has been one of the first to introduce semi-automated offside technology (SAOT).

Using multiple cameras positioned throughout a stadium and a tracker within the ball itself, it can plot data points for each player and ball to reach a faster conclusion than the VAR can, or so is the theory.

But as the situation unfolded and it became apparent Gvardiol and Haaland were too in line with one another for SAOT to recognise any discrepancies, Clattenburg began to clarify: "Normally they're using the technology to take off the players to find the last part of