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Prank: “If you get your hand in your face, you can stop”

Regardless of the assessment of the referee’s performance, Christian Streich also sees the yellow-red card as “instructional” for talent Kiliann Sildilla. Freiburg’s coach also points out a difference in behavior between his and Dortmund’s players after arm offenses.

Look again at the game in Dortmund: Christian Streich.

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Streich, who saw yellow-red himself, felt that Robert Schröder’s refereeing on Saturday in Dortmund was not proportionate. As an example, he named an arm offense by Niklas Süle in a running duel with Daniel-Kofi Kyereh, which was not called at all. Shortly thereafter, Sildillia received his first yellow card for a comparable arm effort in a running duel with Karim Adeyemi on the halfway line.

On Sunday, Schröder admitted on the TV show Doppelpass that the Kyereh/Süle scene slipped through and should have been punished as a foul. In retrospect, however, he rated Sildillia’s foul as yellow. Earlier, the 20-year-old Frenchman had already committed a foul on Adeyemi after he slipped while in possession and hit his opponent in the legs with his arms as he fell.

In the third duel that followed in quick succession, he stopped Adeyemi, who had passed the ball well, from continuing to run with a short clumsy grip. Also because the edge of the penalty area was close and it could have been a promising BVB attack, Sildillia saw a quite clear yellow card in terms of rules, and as a result yellow-red.

You can still see this dismissal as excessive. A last warning, visible to everyone, with a clear indication of the threat of being sent off the next offense would have been justifiable and probably more appropriate to the game.

But of course there is another level of evaluation in this case. Despite all the discussion about Schröder’s decision, one thing is certain: Sildillia, who was recently cautioned with a yellow card, should have behaved smarter, should have let Adeyemi go without a foul in the third duel, even at the risk of a big BVB chance. Even a goal wouldn’t have weighed as heavily as being outnumbered for more than 70 minutes.

Professionals often fall too quickly

“He didn’t behave well,” Streich also admitted on Monday, but pointed out another point: “Kofi gets his elbow in his face, on his neck – and stops. And in Kiliann’s running duel he lies (Adeyemi, Editor’s note) directly on the floor. You can tick that off under cleverness and lack of cleverness with us, because if you get your hand in your face, you can of course stop and hold your face.”

In any case, this is the fairest of all possibilities and actually deserves praise and not the label “lacking cleverness”. The problem, however, is that the referees are still too often influenced in their penalties by the bad habit that is generally rampant in professional football: they almost always drop themselves too quickly, too theatrically. So it would have been interesting if the four referees would have overlooked Süle’s foul on Kyereh if the Freiburg player had gone down.

Streich: “Dortmund was of course ahead of us in many ways”

Streich didn’t say any of that on Tuesday. He didn’t explicitly accuse Adeyemi either, but explained: “Dortmund was of course ahead of us in many things, especially Adeyemi and how they behave in these situations.” It would be interesting to find out how Streich really thinks about it and whether his statements are now full of resignation.

For Sildillia, however, it was “instructive, no question”. The slipping in some situations, which also happened to Dortmund players in the early stages, was aggravated. Nevertheless: “Kiliann has to behave differently and learns from it. Of course it was painful for us, but that’s normal.”

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