Lens-Sporting refereeing analysis: Henriques backs Pajac but questions the added time

Pedro Henriques came away from Lens vs Sporting CP with a largely positive read on Igor Pajac's work, but he finished on one clear complaint. He said the second-half added time was too short, and he also pointed to the early corner-kick mistake at 10' that VAR could not correct.

The match was mostly calm

Henriques's overall verdict was not hard to place. In his view, it was a well-officiated game with no major incidents, and the raw numbers fit that read: only 20 fouls were shown across the match, along with just two yellow cards.

That sort of game gives an official room to stay in control without becoming the story. Sporting CP won 2-0 at Lens, so the result never turned on a refereeing flashpoint.

At 10', Maxi Araújo touched the ball before it went out over the goal line, but the referee and assistant gave a goal kick instead of a corner. Henriques's point was not that VAR should have stepped in, because the protocol does not allow that kind of correction, but that the original call was wrong.

The added-time complaint

The sharper criticism came at the end. At 45', the referee gave two minutes of added time in the first half, with the goal and Luís Suárez's treatment cited as the main stoppages. At 90', Henriques said the referee gave three minutes in the second half, but judged five minutes would have been the correct amount.

That gap is the part of the review that lingers. A match can be tidy and still leave a timekeeping issue behind, especially when there have been stoppages to account for and the final spell is still live.

Henriques's final line was still broadly complimentary, though. Speaking to A Bola in comments translated from Portuguese, he said: "In a well-officiated match and without major incidents, the Croatian referee was always very good". The added-time note, though, was his main problem, and it is the one that will shape most of the discussion around Pajac's performance from Lens vs Sporting CP.