In the midst of the fireworks on the court, a turnover instantly ignited the home team's counterattack, and they came down like tigers with the intention of recovering from the score disadvantage. However, Guangzhou's defense was like a brick wall, holding its ground and not allowing any loss. But there are always accidents in the arena, and in the 70th minute, Mu Xiekui took advantage of the situation and equalized the score, making the game 1-1. After that, the two sides went back and forth, and it was hard to distinguish between offense and defense, so they finally shook hands to make up for it and each of them got a point.
However, behind this draw lies a controversy. From the live camera can be clearly seen, Mu Xiekui in the moment of passing the ball, suspected offside suspicion (as shown in the picture above). That last defender is the right back Xu Bin. From their position on the field, Mu Xiekui's offside margin was almost half a body position.
However, due to the lack of video assistant referee (VAR) support in the Central League, the referee had to rely on naked eye judgment and failed to raise the offside flag. The referee was equally unable to cancel the goal. Could this be the price of a misjudgment? Let's wait and see. In this battle over offside, it was clear that Mu Xiekui was offside when he passed the ball, half a body length away. But what's confusing is why the referee didn't notice the obvious offside. Refereeing in the Chinese League seems to be a bit hopeless. This season, Guangzhou team suffered many times from similar wrong penalties, and Evergrande fans seem to have been surprised by this. Despite the regret of not being able to achieve "revenge", Guangzhou fans were pleased with the progress shown by the team in the match against the Central League leaders. From a 0-5 deficit to 1-1, the team's improvement was obvious. Especially, the average age of the team's players is less than 22 years old, which makes this improvement even more precious.
