In the changing winds of the game, the home team woke up after conceding the ball and launched a stormy counter-attack with the intention of getting back to the city. However, Guangzhou was like an impregnable fortress, defending tightly and leaving no gap for the opponents to take advantage of. But fate always seems to play jokes, in the 70th minute, Mu Xiekui grasped a desperate opportunity, single-handedly, to equalize the score to 1-1. Immediately after that, the two sides went back and forth, but neither side was able to make another move, and finally shook hands to settle for a point each.
However, Mu Xiekui's goal was like a heavy bomb that triggered a huge controversy. According to the observation of the live broadcast screen, Mu Xiekui seemed to have been offside at the moment of the pass (as shown in the picture above). Right back Xu Bin, as the last defender, was almost half a body position away from Mu Xiekui. However, there is no video assistant referee (VAR) intervention in the Chinese League One match, the side judge only by the naked eye, did not raise the flag to indicate offside, and the referee was unable to reverse the goal. Was this a misjudgment? Let's continue to explore.
Looking at the offside diagram, Mushiqui was clearly offside at the moment of the pass, almost more than a body length away. But it is puzzling why the side referee did not catch such an obvious mistake. Refereeing in the Central League is indeed deeply frustrating. Guangzhou has suffered from similar misjudgments many times this season, and Evergrande fans seem to have become numb to it. Nonetheless, Guangzhou's fans were pleased with the progress their team showed in their match against the Central League leaders. Although it is a little unfortunate that they could not achieve their goal of "revenge", the team's improvement is obvious to all. From a 0-5 deficit to a 1-1 equalizer is a huge leap. It is particularly noteworthy that the average age of the team is less than 22 years old.
