Monday, December 13, 2021
Distinguish “Collina’s heirs”
Dayot Upamecano gets away with luck
By Alex Feuerherdt
When is a contact irregular so that there is a foul? What do the referees pay attention to when evaluating? And when is the VAR asked for? Two scenes in Munich and Fürth make it clear.
After SC Freiburg lost 3-0 at RB Leipzig in November 2020, Christian Streich – when asked about the penalty that led to the 2-0 for Leipzig and which he considered an inappropriate decision – formulated two sentences that have been since then are quoted again and again: “Nowadays it is said that there was a contact. I always thought there had to be a foul in order for it to be a foul.” What the Freiburg coach meant by that is obvious: Football is a contact sport, and therefore not every contact is an offense. It depends more on whether it really involves kicking, tripping, kicking or hitting – that is, one Foul play – fulfilled.
In order to decide that, the referees assess a possibly criminal contact on the one hand according to whether it is the cause or the decisive factor in the fact that the opposing player falls, loses the ball or does not reach it. On the other hand, they assess whether the impulse and the effect of the contact fit together, which is not the case if, for example, a player falls after a slight touch, as if he had just been the victim of a blood stick. And finally, it also plays a role who initiates a potentially punishable contact in a duel: the defender by tripping on the knees or the attacker by deliberately lungeing?
Upamecano versus Lee: he half hit him, half he sank
All of this is by no means always easy to recognize and decide, and of course there is a gray area and all kinds of borderline cases. An example came about in the match between FC Bayern Munich and 1. FSV Mainz 05 (2: 1) in the 19th minute. Munich defender Dayot Upamecano followed up against Jae-Sung Lee after losing the ball in his own penalty area, but did not hit the ball, but instead hit the Freiburg’s right with his left foot. Lee went down, but referee Benjamin Cortus, who was ideally positioned, immediately spread his arms to signal that, in his opinion, there was no offense. Video assistant Benjamin Brand also did not intervene, which met with incomprehension from both Mainz trainer Bo Svensson and sports director Martin Schmidt.
The referee had by no means made a clear and obviously wrong decision. Upamecano did not play the ball, only hit Lee’s foot – but not every contact necessarily constitutes a foul. Was the contact the cause of Lee’s fall? He was able to rest his right foot safely on the floor and then toppled over with his entire body. At least that didn’t look like a direct result of the contact on the foot, impulse and effect didn’t quite fit together here. In addition, the Freiburg resident had previously taken a significant lunge step in the direction of Upamecano with his right leg. To shield the ball or to initiate contact? More speaks in favor of the latter.
Nevertheless, it is a weighty argument that Upamecano was in the worse position after losing the ball, proceeded too impetuously and did not reach the ball; there was only contact with the opposing foot. For the VAR it was “more of a penalty”, as Lutz Michael Fröhlich, the sporting director of the referees, revealed in the program “Doppelpass”. The word “rather” does not mean “that it is a clearly wrong decision”. There were reasons for Cortus, who had the best view of the duel, not to recognize penalties; he had noticed the contact, but had not rated it as decisive for Lee’s fall. That was certainly not an absurd assessment, and therefore no intervention by the video assistant in Cologne was necessary.
Fürth’s goal for the first home win is regular
The situation was similar in the encounter between SpVgg Fürth against 1. FC Union Berlin (1-0) at goal of the day, which gave the hosts their first home win in their Bundesliga history. Before his goal, Havard Nielsen pressed a little with his right arm against the back of Kevin Behrens at the Berlin goal area border when the ball flew up. It wasn’t a clear push, but more a gentle push, and the way Behrens then jumped off, threw his legs back and went into the hollow back, had little to do with the impulse Nielsen had caused. Rather, it looked as if he wanted to signal to referee Sven Jablonski: Look, I was pushed away and therefore couldn’t reach the ball.
Here, too, there was a margin of discretion for the referee, who decided not to penalize the use of the arm and thus acted in a reasonable manner. Likewise, there would have been arguments for canceling the hit, because Nielsen gained an advantage through his approach. But the impulse wasn’t so strong that Behrens inevitably had to lose the duel. Even at Union they were divided: While coach Urs Fischer spoke of a “clear wrong decision”, his players Grischa Prömel and Timo Baumgartl did not necessarily think that Jablonski should have whistled. The evaluation was in the gray area, which for VAR Pascal Müller meant that a review recommendation was not necessary if the referee perceived the scene in one way or another. That he stayed out was completely correct.
Bellingham nullifies Wolf’s hit
In the game VfL Bochum – Borussia Dortmund (1: 1), on the other hand, video assistant Timo Gerach intervened after BVB’s alleged equalizer in the 54th minute – and that was also correct. Because when Marius Wolf shot Jude Bellingham was in the line of sight of the Bochum goalkeeper Manuel Riemann to the ball and was in an offside position. In this way, in terms of rules, he had influenced the keeper’s ability to play the ball. Whether Riemann would otherwise have held the ball and prevented the goal is irrelevant; it just depends on whether his ability to get the ball has been impaired.
The fact that a teammate, Erhan Mašović, interfered with the hosts goalkeeper’s view of the ball also played no role in the assessment of Bellingham’s offside position. Referee Matthias Jöllenbeck had not found any visual obstruction and therefore initially recognized the goal. However, VAR Gerach recommended an on-field review after a two-minute check, and after another minute of monitoring on the monitor, the referee canceled the goal. One might object that, given the relatively clear facts, it took a long time. On the other hand, after BVB’s annoyance with the referees and the VAR in the game against FC Bayern Munich a week ago, it was understandable that the referees wanted to exercise particular care in this renewed intervention. According to the motto: thoroughness comes before speed.