VfL Wolfsburg was close to its first success in the Champions League on Wednesday, in the end it was only enough to beat Sevilla 1: 1. The main topic after the game was a debatable referee decision.
Mark van Bommel was angry. And what that means has been known in German football at least since his time as the alpha male of FC Bayern Munich. So the new coach of VfL Wolfsburg said very clearly about the questionable penalty whistle, which on Wednesday evening brought his team to their first win of this Champions League season in a 1-1 (0-0) against Sevilla FC shortly before the end: “Everyone here in the hall, in the stadium and in front of the television agrees that this is not a penalty. And you can overdo it with the video referee.”
Only his midfielder Maximilian Arnold was even more outraged: “It’s a bit bottomless,” said the. “I don’t know whether they used the video evidence for the first time, whether this is new for everyone. You can’t whistle something like that in the Champions League.”
The controversial scene took place in the 84th minute when the score was 1-0 for VfL. Wolfsburg’s Josuha Guilavogui shot the ball in the penalty area out of the danger zone and then hit the shin of the Seville professional Erik Lamela from the shooting movement. The referee Georgi Kabakov from Bulgaria, who was very insecure from the start, initially allowed the game to continue until his video assistant from the Netherlands intervened.
Both looked at the moving images for a long time and then decided on the dismissal for Guilavogui (85th / yellow-red) and a penalty for Sevilla, which the former Schalke Ivan Rakitic converted confidently (87th). In contrast to all the players, coaches and fans of VfL, they apparently rated the action as a reckless boarding, which should be rated more than playing the ball, because Guilavogui had hit the leg of his opponent with the open sole.
The crucial question about this scene was posed after the game by the player who had put Wolfsburg in the lead in the 48th minute: “Where should he go with his leg afterwards?” Said Swiss Renato Steffen. “He can’t magic it away.”
Van Bommel went to the referee after the final whistle and said afterwards: “My only question for him was: Why did he make this decision? But I got no answer. We deserved to win.”
The bitter thing for VfL is: Instead of keeping the supposedly strongest opponent of this Group G at a distance with four points, the Bundesliga club is now only in third place with two points. “Everything is very close in this group. It will stay that way until matchday six. That means: Every point is very expensive. Four points after two games in this group is completely different from two points after two games,” said van Bommel.
Mark van Bommel: Wolfsburg’s coach discussed with referee Georgi Kabakov after the final whistle. (Source: Revierfoto / imago images)
In addition, however, the already much-criticized video evidence influenced the outcome of a game in a highly controversial way twice on this second Champions League matchday. On Tuesday evening, van Bommel’s former club AC Milan lost 2-1 to Atletico Madrid with a penalty goal in stoppage time. Here, too, the video assistant watched a controversial scene for minutes and, in the opinion of many critics, overlooked the fact that a Madrid player had more likely to play the ball by hand than the Milanese.
“I’m a friend and opponent of the video evidence,” said the Wolfsburg coach. “Why? You can make wrong decisions that are right. That makes football better. But you are always dependent on the decision of the person sitting in front of the television.”
The referee podcast Collinas Erben reported on the referee’s decision late Wednesday evening – and tried to explain: “The punishment was the grazing hit with the sole of the shin, which occurred after playing the ball while swinging. This contact has the referee probably not noticed (“serious missed incident”) “, said the moderator of the podcast, Alex Feuerherdt, on Twitter.
Feuerherdt continues: “The referee rated this as inconsiderate, hence yellow-red. However, the contact could hardly be avoided because the attacker stretched his leg towards the opponent without being able to play the ball. Guilavogui is actually not to be blamed here. “
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