Braga challenged Luciano Gonçalves’s council leadership

At 1-0 in the 49th minute of Braga’s home match against Sporting on 9 October, play stopped as the referee awaited a VAR clarification. Braga says Issa Doumbia had handled the ball in the penalty area, but referee João Pinheiro had not seen it and VAR failed to intervene. The club says the penalty should have been awarded and that its absence affected the result; after losing 3-1, Braga made the call the focus of a demand for change at the top of Portuguese refereeing. No response from Doumbia or Sporting to Braga’s allegation is recorded.

Braga’s complaint has become a challenge to who oversees refereeing, not only whether one penalty was missed. Benfica widened the dispute by pairing Braga’s handball claim with Porto’s separate one-centimetre offside call, turning confidence into a question about both decisions and the system that reviews them. There is no single fix on the table, but the proposals address different weaknesses: semi-automated offside could reduce uncertainty over marginal calls, while an independent VAR audit and transparent accountability could make oversight more credible. The test now is whether the federation answers the clubs’ demands with changes that are visible and open to scrutiny.

Braga’s letter put a name and a remedy beside its complaint: it asked the Portuguese Football Federation and the Arbitration Council for immediate measures, and said Luciano Gonçalves was not in a position to lead the council. António Salvador, Braga’s president, sent the letter on 10 October, describing it as a final warning over the conditions in which referees and VAR officials work.

Salvador’s criticism also focused on what Gonçalves did after the match. He said the council president appeared in a television studio while responding to coverage of his private life and financial circumstances. In Salvador’s view, doing so after a decisive game showed that Gonçalves was not focused on leading refereeing. Braga said instability was affecting work on the pitch and in VAR rooms, the quality of decisions, and the review and learning that follow them.

The demand came amid scrutiny of Gonçalves, but his response was that he remained willing to cooperate with investigators. Speaking to CMTV, he said he had not been notified by police and would provide the phone data they required. He also accused the media of fuelling a negative atmosphere and creating smoke screens to divert attention from other issues, but did not answer Braga’s demand that he leave his post.

I have not even been notified, but I am entirely available whenever they decide. Phone data? I will hand over anything they need, as I have from the outset.

That response addressed his willingness to assist investigators, not Braga’s demand that he leave his post. The club’s letter made the leadership question part of a broader claim: that instability inside football’s governing structures was damaging the quality of decisions and the process for examining them afterwards.

The Braga incident was not the only close VAR decision on 10 October. At Marítimo, FC Porto’s Oskar Pietuszewski saw a goal initially ruled out for offside before a review reversed the decision, judging him onside by one centimetre. Porto won 2-1, with the goal allowed after the check.

The margin made the call especially easy to scrutinise: the distinction was a single centimetre, measured on a video review. It was a different kind of decision from Braga’s complaint, which concerned an alleged handball in the penalty area and VAR’s failure to intervene. But both put the technology and the officials using it at the centre of club complaints.

Benfica brought the two incidents together in a post on X, sharing images of the Doumbia handball and Pietuszewski’s goal. The club criticised VAR with the caption, a move reported by Record, A Bola and Observador. It gave the debate a wider frame: a disputed penalty in Braga and an ultra-close offside call in Porto were now being presented together as evidence of concern over decisions in separate matches.

The proposals now being raised look beyond individual calls to how VAR decisions are made and checked. Mauro Xavier called for semi-automated offside technology, an independent audit of VAR and deeper reform of refereeing, according to Record.

Benfica had already submitted reform proposals to the Portuguese Football Federation in September. Its package calls for independence, professionalisation, transparency and accountability, and includes automated offside detection and fully professional VAR teams, Record reported.

Xavier also called for Benfica to take its proposal to a vote at the FPF General Assembly, although no date for such a vote was given.

There is a case for the Porto decision. Refereeing analyst Pedro Henriques told A Bola that the assistant referee followed protocol by waiting until the move ended before raising his flag, and that VAR was right to overturn the initial offside call. He said officials repeat marginal measurements at least three times before changing a decision; he also judged the intervention on Oskar Pietuszewski’s goal positive.

Mauro Xavier’s objection is about whether the tools can support that level of certainty. He said a manually selected frame and hand-drawn lines cannot reliably establish a difference as small as one centimetre.

Two minutes to validate a goal by one centimetre. In May, in Benfica-Braga, they disallowed a Benfica goal by four centimetres. Differences impossible to guarantee with a frame chosen by hand and a line drawn by hand.

Braga’s complaint raises a separate question about what happened on the pitch: its letter says João Pinheiro did not see the alleged handball and stopped play seconds later while waiting for VAR clarification.

Portugal has seen other marginal offside calls. In 2025, a goal by Benfica’s Sudakov against Tondela was disallowed after assist-maker Dodi Lukebakio was judged offside by one centimetre, Record reported. In 2021-22, VAR confirmed Kévin Zohi was a centimetre ahead for Vizela against Gil Vicente; in 2022, it allowed Nuno Moreira’s goal for Vizela against Porto after judging him level. A similar level decision allowed Ronan to score for Tondela against BSAD in 2020, according to Record.

The dispute over how VAR should work and what officials disclose is not confined to Portugal. In Spain, semi-automated offside technology failed to identify an offside scorer, and the goal stood; the VAR team was removed from its next appointments. A later review of an Atlético Madrid goal lasted eight minutes before it was disallowed, the BBC reported.

Disclosure also differs between competitions. Major League Soccer has released VAR audio after matches since 2019, while La Liga publishes audio and video of subjective interventions on social media. In September 2026, the BBC reported that a Premier League refereeing working group wanted rules relaxed to allow live VAR audio, but that IFAB and FIFA were not close to supporting full disclosure. More tools and more access can help scrutiny, but neither has ended disagreement over how VAR should be used.

The pause in the 49th minute at Braga’s stadium now has an institutional sequel.

Before then, the clubs’ European fixtures will bring the officials and decisions back into focus.

• The European fixtures: Sporting visit Lens on 13 October, Porto visit Real Betis on 14 October, and Benfica host Celtic and Braga visit FC Copenhagen on 15 October.