Chelsea coach laments lack of VAR on hair-pulling incident in Women's Champions League

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Chelsea coach Sonia Bompastor whipped out her cell phone in a post-match interview and replayed footage of a hair-pulling incident missed by match officials in the Women's Champions League game against Arsenal.

The clip played by Bompastor in a TV interview showed Arsenal defender Katie McCabe pulling back the flowing hair of Chelsea forward Alyssa Thompson as the U.S. international broke forward in the final seconds in search of a goal to take Wednesday's game to extra time.

The French coach, who felt McCabe should have been sent off, complained to Danish referee Frida Klarlund from the sideline and was shown a red card. Bompastor continued to vent her anger afterward.

“I brought the phone with me — I don’t know if you can see that. That’s probably not usual,” said Bompastor, who held up the screen and pressed play to show the incident. “But if you look at this video, and I don’t know if you can see, for me it is clearly a red card for the Arsenal player. She’s pulling Alyssa’s hair. So I think, for me, if the VAR again is not able to check that situation, I don’t know why we have the VAR.”

Bompastor said Thompson “was crying” after the incident, which happened soon after Chelsea scored in the fourth minute of stoppage time to make it 1-0. That’s how it stayed and Arsenal advanced 3-2 on aggregate.

McCabe took to social media after the game, posting on Instagram Stories: “I just want to clarify that I was genuinely reaching for the shirt, I wouldn’t ever want to pull someone’s hair. Full respect to Thompson.”

UEFA was still waiting on Thursday for the match delegate’s report.

Hair-pulling can be regarded as violent conduct and punished with a red card, as was the case in the Women's European Championship last year when the video assistant referee spotted Germany midfielder Kathrin Hendrich yanking the ponytail of France captain Griedge Mbock at a free kick.

In men's soccer, Paris Saint-Germain midfielder João Neves was sent off for pulling down Marc Cucurella by his hair toward the end of Chelsea’s 3-0 victory in the Club World Cup final last year.

In the Premier League, Everton defender Michael Keane was sent off in January after a video review for pulling the hair of Wolverhampton's Tolu Arokodare as they competed for a header. Everton failed with an appeal to the Football Association that it did not constitute violent conduct.

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