Ruud van Nistelrooy was left seething after Leicester City’s controversial FA Cup exit, claiming his side was not beaten in “Fergie time” but “offside time.” Harry Maguire’s 93rd-minute goal secured Manchester United’s place in the next round, despite appearing offside. With no video assistant referee in use until the next stage of the competition, the goal stood, leaving Leicester’s players and coaching staff incensed.
“It is a hard one to take because the game was decided on a mistake,” Van Nistelrooy fumed. “It is not a matter of VAR where you have to look at millimetres. It is half a metre, it is clear. The team didn’t deserve to lose the game in this way. They fought, played well, and dominated the game for a long bit.”
The frustration stemmed from what seemed like an obvious offside, yet the assistant referee allowed the goal to stand despite being well-positioned to see the infringement. Calls for VAR to be introduced earlier in the competition have intensified, though Van Nistelrooy remained non-committal when asked if it should be implemented from the third round onwards. “Let me think about that question,” he responded curtly.
His disappointment was evident when further pressed about the significance of Leicester’s elimination. “That is not a question for me,” he snapped. “We want to die on the pitch today, to get to the next round, to be the best we can be, to be competitive, we are representing ourselves on the pitch at Old Trafford.”
Ruben Amorim, Manchester United’s manager, admitted his team was far from its best, expressing visible frustration with their performance. “We had to believe until the end, but this game has nothing to do with the time of Fergie,” he remarked, dismissing comparisons to the legendary manager’s era.
United took the lead in the first half through Bobby De Cordova-Reid, but Leicester responded in the 67th minute when Joshua Zirkzee’s goal brought them level. The match seemed destined for a replay until Maguire’s last-minute intervention, a moment Amorim acknowledged came with an element of fortune. “I think so,” he admitted. “We need a lot of things, nothing to do with luck, it has to do with the quality of the work, we need to improve every detail of the game, energy.”
His verdict on his team’s performance was damning. “My work with them has to be so much better,” he said. “But sometimes you need a little bit of luck, and today we had it. It’s really hard to lose a game in the last minute with an offside play.”
Amorim was particularly critical of United’s sluggish start. “We didn’t have any energy in the beginning, especially in the first half. Then in the second half we played a little bit better, with a little more speed, winning second balls. Then we managed to turn things around, so it was a good result, not a good performance.”
Despite the controversy, United advanced, leaving Leicester to rue what they saw as an injustice. The debate over VAR’s role in the FA Cup will likely continue, but for Van Nistelrooy and his team, the disappointment of elimination in such circumstances will take time to fade.
