Manchester City got the derby win.
Pro Ref has now admitted the decisive goal should not have counted.
Enzo Maresca’s response is simple: refereeing controversy does not move in only one direction.
The City manager defended match officials after Howard Webb acknowledged that Erling Haaland’s winner in the 1–0 victory over Manchester United at Old Trafford was incorrectly awarded.
City won the 199th Manchester derby despite playing with 10 men from the 23rd minute after Phil Foden was sent off.
Haaland struck the only goal in the 60th minute.
But the goal has since become the centre of the argument.
Pro Ref chief refereeing officer Webb said the officials made an error because Enzo Fernández, although he did not touch the ball, was in an offside position and interfered with Manchester United’s ability to defend the attack.
Webb said the VAR became too focused on establishing whether Haaland himself was onside and failed to properly assess Fernández’s involvement in the phase.
That admission changed the argument from whether a mistake occurred to what the mistake means.
Maresca refuses to turn on officials
Maresca has chosen not to attack the refereeing team.
His position is that contentious decisions can favour a team in one match and hurt it in another.
He also pointed back to an earlier Manchester derby controversy that City believed went against them, arguing that officiating disputes should not be judged as though they flow in only one direction.
That does not erase the latest error.
Pro Ref has already acknowledged it.
But Maresca’s argument shifts the debate from one decision to the wider inconsistency teams believe they experience across a season.
Where VAR lost control
The failure came during the review of Haaland’s goal.
Haaland had initially been flagged offside, but the review established that he was onside.
The problem came elsewhere.
Fernández had moved towards the ball from an offside position. He did not make contact, but Webb said his movement interfered with Manchester United’s defending.
Under the offside law, touching the ball is not always required for an offence if a player in an offside position clearly affects an opponent.
That part of the attack was missed.
The goal stood.
City won 1–0.
The error does not erase City’s resistance
The refereeing admission does not remove everything that happened around it.
City spent most of the match with 10 players after Foden’s dismissal and still managed to survive United’s numerical advantage.
Maresca’s side continued to carry attacking threat rather than simply retreat into damage limitation.
That is what makes the argument uncomfortable for both clubs.
United can point to an officially acknowledged VAR failure on the match-winning goal.
City can point to a performance in which they played more than an hour with 10 men and still found the decisive attacking moment.
Both facts sit inside the same result.
Maresca reaches back to an old derby wound
Maresca’s defence of officials also carried historical baggage.
He referred to the controversial 2023 Manchester derby at Old Trafford, when Bruno Fernandes scored after Marcus Rashford had been in an offside position during the move.
City argued at the time that Rashford had influenced the defending despite not touching the ball.
Maresca has used that incident to argue that City have also been on the losing side of controversial interpretations.
The comparison will not settle anything.
It is Maresca’s argument, not proof that the incidents were identical.
But it adds another layer to a rivalry in which offside interference has now become part of the history.
Pressure moves to the refereeing system
The biggest consequence now sits beyond either Manchester club.
It lands on Pro Ref and the credibility of the review process.
The organisation has chosen transparency by explaining publicly how the decision broke down.
That matters because VAR was designed to correct clear mistakes.
In this case, the review itself became the mistake.
The admission does not change the Premier League table.
City keep the three points.
United keep the defeat.
What remains is the pressure on officials to show that acknowledging high-profile errors will also improve how similar incidents are reviewed.
Maresca is not pretending the mistake did not happen.
His argument is that one mistake should not be isolated from the wider reality of refereeing controversy.
City benefited from the wrong VAR call.
They also survived a derby with 10 men.
And that leaves English football with the question VAR has never fully escaped: how much certainty should the game expect from a system built to correct mistakes when the correction process itself can fail?