Dhe fans in front of the television hold their breath, the players on the pitch turn their heads towards the referee – and then the racket usually starts. Penalty or not? No question creates more discussions in football. Before the eighth match day there were never so many penalty kicks in the Bundesliga – 30 and 28 of them went into goal. The protagonists are not only concerned with the ongoing topic of handball. “Nowadays it is said that there was a contact. I always thought there had to be a foul in order for it to be a foul, ”said Freiburg coach Christian Streich recently.
In the 1965/66 season, the referees pointed 29 times to the point after seven match days. The current flood of penalties is also made clear by a comparison with the previous season: There were only 16 at the same time and 73 at the end – but significantly fewer than in the three previous rounds (between 91 and 98).
“Far too many penalties are being taken. Both with hand games and with alleged fouls (keyword “contact”), “tweeted ex-world champion Mats Hummels from Borussia Dortmund. Another statistic confirms the statement of the top defender: Only on matchday 12, 1971/72, were more penalties awarded with twelve than on the previous matchday with ten.
“I agree with you that after seven match days that is an above-average number. But: If we had had this conversation before the seventh game day and the ten penalty kicks, we would have been under the cut, ”said DFB instructor Lutz Wagner in a“ kicker ”interview on the question of what’s going on in the Bundesliga. The 57-year-old has “not yet derived a trend” from this. The decisive factor for the rules expert is how many of them were justified: “Seven were completely justified, two controversial, one wrong.”
FC Schalke 04, without a win in 23 games, has already suffered six penalties. At 2-2 in Mainz, Königsblau was once again disadvantaged. “It’s enough sometime. It’s enough now! ”Raged sports director Jochen Schneider in the Sky interview in the direction of the Video Assist Center. “I don’t know what’s going on in Cologne at the moment.” But coach Manuel Baum recently put that into perspective: “We make too many mistakes out of passion.”
Lehrwart Wagner does not want to know that the interference by the video assistants had something to do with the many penalties: “The number of interventions is falling. But regardless of that: Ultimately, despite all the rules, it is also about subjective perception, about different thresholds, how and what someone evaluates and whether and when someone intervenes. “
Of the 30 penalties so far, seven were given for handball. These points of contention contain – in contrast to contentious offside situations, which can be resolved with technology – always a “gray area”, said top referee Deniz Aytekin of the “Main Post”. “This is where situations boil and are discussed.” The new rules do not change that either. Wagner sees it this way: “We are no longer at the point where only“ intention ”is decisive. The unnatural posture of the arm or hand has been added. But that’s still better than generally punishing every handball with a penalty. “
And when it comes to foul or not in the penalty area? “In the upper body area, contacts are dependent on impulse and effect and are often not punishable, but on the leg, a little touch is sometimes enough,” said the DFB instructor. The fact that the attackers often lift off with a gentle touch already existed when the 55-year-old Christian Streich was not even born. And it hasn’t changed much with video evidence either.
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