Questionable decision
“You can’t make a worse mistake”
April 24, 2026 – 8:01 a.mReading time: 2 minutes
SC Freiburg feels cheated of a goal. Stuttgart celebrates, but as winners they hand out the referee and criticize sharply.
After the dramatic semi-final exit in the DFB Cup, a disallowed goal at SC Freiburg caused a lot of anger. “If that’s a foul, then I think I have to end my career here and today because it’s really nothing,” complained captain Christian Günter after the 1:2 (1:1, 0:1) against VfB Stuttgart after extra time. “He runs against a 1.95 man, he just flies there and it’s never a foul.” Freiburg’s coach Julian Schuster also recognized a “regular” goal: “Sorry, that’s not a foul. That hurts.”
What had happened? Freiburg supposedly took the lead in the first minute of extra time. But even before Lucas Höler had shot the ball over the line, the team of referees around Tobias Welz had decided on a foul against VfB defense chief Jeff Chabot. “I told him that it was an impudence to whistle it away. And he said that it was a crystal-clear decision,” said Höler later on Sky.
Even striker Deniz Undav from the victorious VfB sharply criticized the referee’s decision. “I don’t think you can make a worse mistake than being a referee. Good for us, of course, but you can never, ever blow the whistle away,” said the German international. Stuttgart coach Sebastian Hoeneß could also understand Freiburg’s frustration. “You can’t dismiss the situation. We would have reacted the same way Freiburg did,” he said.
After the end of the game, Undav fundamentally criticized referee Welz, who in his opinion had no sensitivity for the emotional Baden-Württemberg semi-final. “He wasn’t able to control the game really well today. He gave too many yellow cards. At the beginning there were a lot of fouls that weren’t fouls,” said the goalscorer to make it 1-1. “You can’t talk to him either,” said Undav about the referee Welz. “I don’t like him anyway. We had a problem before.”