Former referee Manuel Graefe sees two crucial mistakes, international commentators are stunned: Tobias Stieler’s decision to award a hand penalty in the DFB Cup game between Bochum and Dortmund brings new impetus to an ongoing debate.
Referee Tobias Stieler was the focus. Almost 60 minutes had been played in the DFB Cup round of 16 when Bochum’s Anthony Losilla tried to shoot at goal, but only hit the arm of Dortmund’s Jamie Bynoe-Gittens. He had put his arm against his body and turned away from the ball, but for Stieler the situation was obviously clear enough to decide on a penalty. “The arm is slightly bent,” said the referee afterwards on the ARD microphone, “not that much, but it’s not very tight on the body either, and for me it was just enough to award a penalty.”
An assessment that was by no means shared by everyone, even if Stieler reported from the field that it was “never an issue” among the footballers of VfL Bochum and Borussia Dortmund “whether it was handball” – only whether Bynoe- Gittens and his arm would have been inside or outside the penalty area at that moment. “For me, there were more arguments in favor of the penalty than against the penalty,” said the 41-year-old, explaining why he didn’t revise his first decision. ntv referee expert Alex Feuerherdt tweeted at “Collina’s heirs”that “no unnatural enlargement of the body” can be seen – and Bynoe-Gittens is even obviously trying to “avoid handball”, but: “Stieler evaluated it differently.”
The commentators of the Argentine branch of the US sports broadcaster ESPN didn’t go down very well Javier Caceres reported on Twitter. Their devastating verdict: “Terrible, this referee.” According to the journalist of the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, the discussion there was mainly about “the fact that Stieler made a buck”.
After a short discussion with the video assistant, the referee ran to the sidelines to watch the scene again himself. For minutes, the video assistant referee was once advertised as being able to make decisions quickly. But Stieler let the player fast-forward, rewind, change perspective – before he turned around for what felt like an eternity and pointed to the penalty spot again.
Wasn’t that a foul before?
Caceres quoted that, according to the ESPN commentators, Stieler “broke the game” and that it was noticeable “that the players feel unfairly treated”. The handball rule has been an ongoing topic of contention for years, and has now been adapted and reinterpreted so often that most non-referees only wave their hand when another handball penalty is called. Sometimes amused, sometimes annoyed, sometimes stunned. Even soccer pros and coaches regularly admit that they have given up trying to enforce the handball rule.
Former Bundesliga referee Manuel Graefe, who has repeatedly criticized his former colleagues, also sees the decision as a mistake. “Not punishable”, the former top referee tweeted, as Bynoe-Gittens keeps his arm “close to the body” and “in natural motion.” The 49-year-old also responds to the ESPN commentators quoted by Caceres and falls in as well devastating verdict not only about Stieler, but also about the German referees as a whole: “It is worrying that people from all places, no matter how distant, all assess the German refereeing system in the same way: the quality has been declining more and more for years.”
Especially since, according to Gräfe, there was a “clear foul” on Bynoe-Gittens immediately before the alleged handball. Saidy Janko hit him in the penalty area. “In the back with both hands,” says Gräfe. However, this repetition could not be seen on Stieler’s screen – because he “had a very good impression of it live” and saw “no reason” to “whistle for foul”. What remains is the eternally long decision-making process with the VAR over a handball. “Obviously,” even Stieler said in the ARD to, “it’s not the mother of all hand penalties, we don’t need to argue about that at all.”
Stieler can even “empathize well and understand if someone has a different view of this scene”. This apparently also applies to the video assistant, who discussed the penalty whistle with him. According to the referee, he had “a stomach ache with the decision”, especially since the question of the location of the punishable handball he recognized could not be resolved. “It could not be definitively clarified whether inside or outside [des Strafraums]”, continues Stieler: “Then the field decision stops.” A decision that should once again fuel the debate about the quality of the German referees, the added value of the video assistant referee and the handball rule.