BVB coach Edin Terzic could no longer be calmed down after the game against league leaders Leverkusen. Totally emotionally upset, he indirectly blamed the referee Daniel Siebert for the double loss of points. Even his player Brandt knew better than his coach why Terzic was completely off the mark!
“A little more football, a little less crying.” These are the words of a football fan on the Internet that summarize in one sentence what even die-hard BVB supporters would have liked to shout to their coach after Sunday evening’s game at Bayer Leverkusen (1-1). His angry attack on the game’s referee, Daniel Siebert, successfully distracted from his own performance, but in essence went well beyond the target. Terzic’s player Julian Brandt found better words than his coach immediately after the encounter: “Yes, there was the penalty scene, but on the whole Leverkusen deserved to win the game much more than we did.”
The national player in the ranks of Borussia Dortmund remained pale for long stretches of the game, like almost the entire BVB, but after the encounter Julian Brandt was at least able to assess his team’s point win at Bayer Leverkusen in a much more confident and differentiated manner than his coach: “I I would find it disastrous to just focus on this scene. Because the game lasted ninety minutes, there were perhaps sixteen corners for Leverkusen, plus lots of chances and shots.”
“A clear penalty”?
This side of the game was, at least from the outside, not important to BVB coach Edin Terzic after the end of the game. He made the mistake of criticizing the controversial scene from the 73rd minute when Karim Adeyemi went down in the Bayer penalty area after a duel with the two Leverkusen players Exequiel Palacios and Edmond Tapsoba.
In this situation, referee Daniel Siebert did not whistle a penalty for BVB, as Terzic had hoped and expected – but instead allowed the game to continue without consulting the VAR. This made the Dortmund coach angry: “I am of the opinion that it is a contact, a clear penalty. Again and again it is about Karim Adeyemi. He is so fast, he dribbles into this situation at 30 km/h and then just one contact is enough.”
In fact, there was this contact on Adeyemi’s shin and in fact there have already been referees who have awarded a penalty in this scene, but given the line from the extremely confident referee Siebert, a penalty in this situation simply would not have been appropriate. And Edin Terzic should have known that too. After all, BVB itself was lucky that the referee did not award a penalty for Bayer in the 61st minute of the game after Emre Can fouled Exequiel Palacios.
A little more humility
Because as much as Terzic is right with his general criticism of the VAR (“The clear line is missing. What is a penalty and what isn’t”), he was just as wrong in his attack on Siebert that evening. Because the VAR twice refrained from intervening or decided to allow play to continue in both situations, a clear line in the referee’s leadership was clearly visible at all times.
Edin Terzic would have preferred to remain silent after his team’s lucky draw with league leaders Leverkusen. A little more humility wouldn’t have done him and his team any harm after the game. At best, his attack on the referee seems more like an attempt at a targeted diversionary maneuver. In the worst case scenario, however, Edin Terzic has lost sight of reality. The fact that BVB didn’t return home from Leverkusen to the Ruhr area with three points on Sunday evening was primarily due to the team itself. But Terzic preferred to keep a cloak of silence about it. Inside he probably knew exactly why.