It’s an offence to interfere with another player. The fact that he’s there and that close might be considered enough. As the old quote goes, if he ain’t interfering what’s he doing on the pitch?
If it was so clear why did the assistant raise his flag? You take technology as absolute but we can’t determine exactly when the ball was kicked.
So the assistant and the VAR team didn’t overrule it and you think they should have asked you first?
Perhaps they are all biased or deliberately obtuse or just clueless.