Referee Stegemann explains the wrong decision in the game between Eintracht Frankfurt and BVB

The Video Assistant Referee shall correct mistakes and misjudgments made by the referees. In the game between Frankfurt and Dortmund, however, the necessary intervention is missing. Sascha Stegemann then says how that happened. The anger of Eintracht cannot mitigate that.

Sascha Stegemann didn’t make any excuses, but directly admitted the serious mistake. “Yes,” said the referee after the evening game between Eintracht Frankfurt and Borussia Dortmund when asked whether Karim Adeyemi’s shove against Jesper Lindstrom should have been punished. “If I now see the pictures with the corresponding camera perspectives,” said Stegemann on Sky, “you have to clearly state that there should have been a penalty for Eintracht Frankfurt.” Namely, “because the situation in the TV pictures and especially in slow motion is different than it is for me on the field.”

Shortly before half-time and when the score was 1-1, the BVB attacker knocked over the Eintracht striker who was ready to shoot in the penalty area. Instead of pointing to the point, Stegemann indicated a handball and a free kick for Dortmund because Lindström had landed on the ball with his arms when he fell. However, the referee “couldn’t see any clear foul” in the duel, “just normal physical contact,” as he later explained. And even radioed the video assistant referee in the much-cited Cologne basement to ask if he had seen everything correctly.

It’s about this push.

(Photo: IMAGO/Revierfoto)

“The situation was checked there,” Stegemann gave an insight into the communication, but video assistant Robert Kampka and his team “classified the decision as not clear and obviously wrong”. Therefore, the game was continued with a Dortmund free kick. Stegemann was not advised to look at it again himself, as the referees usually do in controversial or confusing situations, also to counteract the unrest on the pitch and in the stands. But the VAR apparently only said: OK, continue. It is actually precisely these errors of perception on the part of the referees that the VAR should correct – and with which its introduction and continuation is officially justified.

The morning after, after a “short and not particularly relaxing night”, Stegemann commented on Sport1. “The check process was broken off too early,” he said, video assistant Kampka also only “used the four standard cameras and unfortunately not any additional cameras, although the possibility would have been there”. A bitter admission that makes Stegemann’s words from the previous evening seem all the more haunting. “Of course we will work through the scene as a team,” the 37-year-old announced immediately after the duel between the two Champions League participants, which BVB ultimately won 2-1, also benefiting from the wrong decision.

“Referees are the poorest”

Meanwhile, on the Eintracht side, there was anger and incomprehension about the lack of intervention by the video assistant. “The referee was let down,” said SGE trainer Oliver Glasner, who didn’t want to blame Stegemann for not recognizing the foul on Lindstrom: “It can happen that you don’t perceive the situation that way.” But that’s exactly what the VAR is for, who can “watch it calmly on the screen”, including “fast forward, rewind, in slow motion”. He has to “see that it’s a penalty.”

Frankfurt’s sports director Markus Krösche refused to use the displeasure as an excuse for the defeat. But “if you don’t use it, my God, then let it be, stomp the basement”. Board spokesman Axel Hellmann went even further and asked: “How can there be a discrepancy? It has to be the same perception.” If the referees were “impaired in their sovereignty” by the VAR, “the authority must also look properly and give a signal”. In scenes like this, however, “our referees are on the pitch at Punch and Judy”.

Glasner said something similar: “I think the referees are the poorest. He’s waiting for the sign from VAR and that doesn’t come.” Frankfurt’s captain Sebastian Rode even said that because of such moments, “the VAR is really counterproductive for everyone involved in football”. And Krösche even went so far as to want to get rid of the video assistant: “Because if the referee makes a mistake, that’s human. But not if I have a video assistant.” But “we can’t do it that way. Then we don’t need it.”

(This article was first published on Sunday, October 30, 2022.)

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