Dhe excitement of this game happened long after the decision had been made. In the 82nd minute of the DFB Cup round of 16, referee Deniz Aytekin ran to Bo Svensson and held the red card in his face. The coach of FSV Mainz 05 was so surprised that he didn’t even want to discuss it anymore, but turned on his heel and made his way to the dressing room. This did not affect the outcome of the match against FC Bayern Munich. Mainz, who were already three goals behind after a disappointingly weak first half, conceded another goal without their head coach and lost 0:4.
“Just so you know: he said ‘blind’,” Aytekin later called out to the print journalists in the mixed zone. Which of course was not true, as he himself said shortly afterwards in an interview with ARD and as Svensson also emphasized. The coach, dissatisfied with several of the referees’ decisions, expressed his displeasure with the fourth official Martin Petersen after Serge Gnabry was supposedly offside and asked the question: “Are you blind?” – semantically a subtle difference to the insult “Blinder “. Aytekin was far from so much differentiation. “We referees are not the garbage can of the nation,” he justified his decision.
“It’s not the best thing to ask such a question,” admitted Svensson, “I apologized to Deniz for that. But I didn’t use swear words. And I’ve heard similar sayings from many banks,” with no suspensions. He himself was so surprised because the fourth official told him he would see a yellow card for that. “And then Deniz comes and gives me red . . .”
If the referees followed this line, they would also have to warn “other people”, Svensson pointed out. It is quite possible that it would then be lonely on the bench. The impression that the referees in Svensson’s case draw the boundaries more narrowly is not deceptive. Of course, the Mainz coach knows “that I’m responsible for it myself, I’ve done a lot for it”. He got two yellow cards in the second half of the year before last, his first six months in the Bundesliga, seven last season (he had to sit out once after four), plus one in the cup, and not all of them were justified.
“Things have been going well all the time this season,” he replied on Wednesday evening when asked if he needed to work on himself. Two warnings after 18 league games give hope that he will go through the summer without a ban. The red card against Bayern doesn’t change that. It only takes effect in the first cup round of the next season.
For this he was banned from indoor use by the German Football Association (DFB). It begins half an hour before the start of the game and ends half an hour after the final whistle, according to the DFB announcement. During this time, the coach is not allowed to stay inside, in the changing rooms, in the players’ tunnel or in the dressing room aisle. During the entire period, he may not come into direct or indirect contact with the team. Svensson has agreed to the verdict, which means that it is final.
