A red card for Dominik Szoboszlai in added time in the first half of the game RB Leipzig against 1. FC Köln (2: 2) heated up emotions in the Leipzig stadium.
Referee Benjamin Brand had seen an assault by the Leipzig midfielder and sent him off the field. Too hard a decision, felt many eyewitnesses.
Baumgart: “The arm has no place up there”
What happened? Szoboszlai was dribbling near the center line and was held by Florian Kainz by the jersey. Brand whistled a free kick for RB, but Kainz still held the Hungarian. He wanted to tear himself away, raised his left arm and hit the man from Cologne in the neck. He fell theatrically to the ground. “The elbow is up and you can see on TV that the neck is hit. The arm has no place up there,” said FC coach Steffen Baumgart.
But he also put it into perspective: “I’m firmly convinced that it wasn’t on purpose, it wasn’t a hitting movement either.” Nevertheless: If the referee had been so wrong, others could have intervened, said Baumgart. The action happened directly in front of the linesman, and two video assistants observed the scene in the Cologne basement. “They could have rated it if the decision was too tough,” said Baumgart.
Kainz: “It’s already red”
Kainz himself wasn’t sure at first: “I don’t know if it’s a red card. It was decided that way,” said the most conspicuous man from Cologne that day, but after a short period of reflection he made it clear: “It’s red, it can you give.”
RB coach Domenico Tedesco just shrugged his shoulders. “He didn’t look at it again. And that’s why it’s a clear decision.” After the game, his boss, CEO Oliver Mintzlaff, gesticulated wildly and gave the referees a few words to take home with them. And Mintzlaff said to Szoboszlai: “The sending off must not happen. For me, that has something to do with arrogance. The elbow has no place there. That’s justifiable.”