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Felix Brych admits mistakes: the video evidence is human

AOn the pitch there was no winner in the 2-2 draw between VfB Stuttgart and Borussia Mönchengladbach, which the team from the Lower Rhine in particular saw as another setback. In the eyes of many observers, however, the game produced a winner: the referee Felix Brych, who, after the intervention of his assistant from the Cologne basement and his own view of the TV images, awarded VfB a very controversial penalty. Silas Wamangituka equalized, and Brych later admitted that he had not interpreted the images optimally.

He had overlooked a contact between the supposedly fouled Sasa Kalajdzic and his own teammate Waldemar Anton, who clearly contributed to the downfall of the Stuttgart man. “That was a complex scene,” said Brych and indicated that he would have better stuck to his original assessment: no penalty. Looking back, his decision was “happy” for VfB, Brych announced, whereupon the Sky expert Lothar Matthäus declared the referee the “man of the day”. This honesty is “better than anything I saw on the football field today,” said Matthäus.

So much enthusiasm may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it was a memorable moment. Brych probably had neither the best pictures nor the ideal interpretation aid from Bibiana Steinhaus from Cologne. Furthermore, only clear errors should be corrected. After the final whistle, Gladbach coach Marco Rose rightly asked himself: “Where is the clear wrong decision?” Nobody could answer this question, it was a gray zone situation for which an intervention from Cologne is not planned.

In return, it was finally openly discussed that video technology also has a human side. It is expected that the VAR will function flawlessly like a reliable machine, which is reinforced by the fact that the referees only publicly admit errors in the interpretation of the TV images in extreme cases. This evening gave the impression that the referees are developing, that they are making it clear how error-prone work on the screens can be.

The time for this is good because every week a few hundred thousand people in the stands in the stadiums are no longer wondering what is going on in Cologne and yelling: “You are ruining our game!” The spectators in the living rooms at home are indulging Communicate well the decision-making processes in which the VAR is involved. Even if they are complex and complex, even if they lead to results that are later perceived as annoying. The fact that many more and much more blatant mistakes happen without video assistants could be seen in the DFB Cup the week before, where technical support is only used from the next round.

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