“You can’t beat the disrespect”
Coach makes serious allegations against referees
03/23/2026 – 06:42 amReading time: 2 minutes
Wuppertaler SV is fighting against relegation from the Regionalliga West. After the league game on Saturday, the sporting aspects took a back seat.
Wuppertaler SV is threatened with going to the top league. The traditional club from the Bergisches Land is in a relegation zone in the Regionalliga West, and the trend is pointing downwards. Only one of the last 16 games could Wuppertal win. There was a 0-0 draw against Sportfreunde Lotte on Saturday, which can almost be seen as a success given the circumstances. Wuppertal played outnumbered players for around 80 minutes, ten of them even outnumbered. Referee Francisco Lahora Chulian twice showed a Wuppertaler the red card.
After the game, the referee was particularly in focus. Because Wuppertal’s coach Mike Wunderlich made serious allegations against him. The reason: the first red card. For him it wasn’t about the expulsion itself, but rather the way of communication. “I don’t want to leave the situation like this,” Wunderlich began his monologue at the press conference.
After a challenge with a Lotte player, Subaru Nishimura was shown the red card. But it took a few minutes for him to get it. According to coach Wunderlich, the referee didn’t know who the perpetrator was. “When my own players come out to me for ten minutes and tell me things that the referee says that we should decide which player is sent off because he doesn’t know which player it was, then I wonder where we’ve gotten to here,” complained Wunderlich. “The next statement: If we don’t do that, if we don’t say which player it was, then he will whistle against us the whole game.”
The allegations from the ex-professional (Kaiserslautern, Rot-Weiss Essen, Viktoria Köln) did not end there. According to Wunderlich, the referee also did not behave correctly towards the Wuppertal team doctor. He said to him: “Then I’ll just get off with you.” Wunderlich’s reaction: “That can’t be surpassed in terms of disrespect. A, that he even said that our team was going to be relegated. And B, then he had the nerve to have the audacity at half-time and to spit big noises that after ten minutes he already knew that it was our player. Then I ask myself what this circus was about.”
There is still no reaction from the West German Football Association. A request from t-online remained unanswered as of Sunday.
