Uefa has defended the role of the video assistant referee in Wednesday’s remarkable Champions League quarter-final second leg at the Etihad Stadium, saying that all angles of Fernando Llorente’s goal were made available to on-field referee Cuneyt Cakir.

The Turkish referee seemed to indicate, having reviewed the third and decisive away goal on the night for Tottenham Hotspur, that he had not seen the ball brush Llorente’s arm before it went in off his hip.

Spurs went on to lose the game 4-3 but win the tie on away goals having prevailed 1-0 in the first leg at their new stadium the previous week.

While the television pundits argued over whether Llorente’s goal should have stood, independent experts have confirmed to The Telegraph that whether or not Cakir saw the ball brush Llorente’s arm, the correct decision was arrived at.

The handball did not meet the criteria for being deliberate and neither was it the key factor in the goal being scored. Under the laws of the game, referees must decide whether a handball is deliberate or inadvertent, based on whether hand moves towards the ball rather than the opposite, and the distance between an opponent and the ball.

Referee Cuneyt Cakir gestures for VAR to check Tottenham's third goal credit: Reuters

Additional to that, Uefa and Premier League referees are advised to disallow any goal – deliberate or inadvertent – when it is the hand that directly propels the ball into the goal.

This will be part of Ifab law from next season but has been used as a guideline for referees for the last two seasons.

Had Llorente diverted the ball into the goal directly with his hand, rather than the key deflection being off his hip, then the goal would have been disallowed – whether the handball was judged to be deliberate or not.

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The consensus at the Premier League and Uefa is that even if a handball is not deliberate, it is morally wrong for players to be able to score with their hand.

Their thinking was focussed by Laurent Koscielny’s handball goal for Arsenal against Burnley in October 2016 – the only goal of the game – which although not deliberate felt out of keeping with the spirit of the game.

In Wolverhampton Wanderers’ league game at home to Manchester City in August, the officials failed to spot that defender Wily Boly had directed the ball in with his arm for his side’s goal. It was not a deliberate handball but as the key factor in scoring the goal it should have been disallowed.