Crystal Palace midfielder Luka Milivojevic has insisted that he saw no contact from Mamadou Sakho on Mohamed Salah for Liverpool's penalty during Monday night's Premier League clash between the two sides.
Salah went down under the challenge of the former Liverpool centre-back, who had three attempts to take the ball off the Egyptian before eventually being penalised right on the stroke of half time.
Michael Oliver pointed to the spot and James Milner subsequently tucked home the penalty, setting Liverpool on their way to a 2-0 victory at Selhurst Park.
Milivojevic revealed that he told Salah to confess that it should not have been a penalty, but despite the controversy the Serbian does not want to see VAR introduced into the Premier League.
"I do not want VAR in this league. In my opinion in this country you have the best referees in the world. That is my opinion and I do not think VAR will help. They are human beings, and they make mistakes sometimes. In his opinion [the referee] did the right thing. As players, we have to respect the referee. We are not a team who will cry over that penalty, we just carry on," Milivojevic told reporters.
"In my opinion it was not a penalty. During the game that was my opinion and after the game when I saw the image, Mama tried to touch the ball, he did not touch the ball and in my opinion, he did not touch the man. He fell down and for the referee it was a penalty. I did not see the contact on Salah. For me, it was clear, it was not a penalty.
"That is my opinion, the referee has his opinion. This is one of the best referees in the country, they are human beings. From my point of view it was not, from his point of view it was. That is football. This is not the first mistake in football. We were angry in the first minute but in football you do not have time to cry, we carried on, we tried in the second half. We had some good chances. OK we lost but we have to be proud.
"I told [Salah] 'say to the referee it was not a penalty'. But he said 'it was'. From his point of view it was a penalty as well. I do not want to talk a lot about that situation, like I said from point of view it was not and from the referee's point of view it was. And that is it."
Palace will look to bounce back from their first defeat of the season when they take on Watford at Vicarage Road on Sunday.
Barney Corkhill
