{"id":581113,"date":"2026-05-13T05:00:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T05:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/581113\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T05:00:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T05:00:19","slug":"tottenham-james-maddison-says-referees-are-petrified-of-making-decisions-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/581113\/","title":{"rendered":"Tottenham: James Maddison says referees are petrified of making decisions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/tottenham-hotspur\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tottenham<\/a> midfielder James Maddison has suggested referees are &#8220;petrified&#8221; to make decisions because of the video assistant referee, after being denied a stoppage-time penalty against <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/leeds-united\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Leeds<\/a> on Monday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Substitute Maddison went down under Lukas Nmecha&#8217;s challenge, but referee Jarred Gillett and the VAR dismissed his appeal for a spot-kick.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/live\/c5y7m90pm96t\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">match finished 1-1<\/a>, leaving Spurs two points above the Premier League relegation zone with two games to play.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Maddison, 29, who was making his first appearance of the season after his return from an anterior cruciate ligament injury, wrote on his Instagram account: &#8220;For clarity\u2026 The small, tiny touch on the ball to change direction came from the outside of my right foot, not Nmecha, and I told the ref that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;But the check was over in about 20 seconds. Officials are petrified to make decisions on pitch now because of VAR. We keep fighting. COYS.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tottenham midfielder James Maddison has suggested referees are &#8220;petrified&#8221; to make decisions because of the video assistant referee,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":580680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-581113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/580680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}