Augsburg (dpa) – The excitement penalty from Augsburg made FSV Mainz 05 stunned. “What are they doing in Cologne?” coach Bo Svensson was outraged by the momentous scene in the catch-up game in the Bundesliga.
“That’s a blatant mistake.” Sports director Martin Schmidt complained after referee Matthias Jöllenbeck’s fatal whistle: “What I can’t understand is that the basement doesn’t help in Cologne and lets him make such a huge mistake.”
Debate about questionable whistle
The hotly debated scene took place on Wednesday evening in the initial phase. The Mainz goalkeeper Robin Zentner jumped a back pass too far from the foot. He then clumsily collided with Augsburg’s Florian Niederlechner in his own penalty area. The striker was in front of Zentner on the ball, but stumbled and was already straddling the contact.
Jöllenbeck pointed to the point, Augsburg captain Jeffrey Gouweleeuw safely converted the penalty in the eleventh minute. In the end, the Fuggerstadt team won 2-1 (1-0) – but the debate was only about the questionable whistle.
Niederlechner referred to contact with Zentner. It was therefore not a swallow from him. The action was not a foul either. “When you see it that way, you don’t have to talk around it,” said Niederlechner after viewing this one scene for the umpteenth time, which overlaid the entire game. “It wasn’t a penalty.”
Referee admits mistakes
Jöllenbeck took responsibility and openly admitted his mistake. “When I see the pictures, I would rather not have given it, actually it’s not a Bundesliga penalty,” said the referee to the Sky TV channel. “I don’t see a clear goal here.” Without further ado, he emphasized: “It was wrong, I’m really sorry.” Because the pictures would speak for themselves.
But why didn’t the Cologne basement, where the video assistant is located, intervene? Because an alleged goal by André Hahn (32nd) was later disallowed after the intervention of the video referee because of a handball. “Maybe I didn’t describe the perception on the pitch clearly enough and maybe that’s why it wasn’t very clear what was seen,” said Jöllenbeck.
In the direction of video referee Tobias Stieler, he also said: “I would have liked to be corrected afterwards, no matter what I say.” But it didn’t come to that.
“We’ll talk about it again in peace”
The image of the video referee is already scratched. Svensson used the occasion for general criticism. “They wanted to clear that up with the video referee, but there were simply too many crucial mistakes made,” complained the Dane. Especially if you have the chance to see scenes “infinitely often”.
The German Football Association admitted that the video assistant made a mistake. “In this complex situation, which can be resolved visually, it would have been right and expected that the video assistant would have given the referee a ‘second look’ at the situation through an on-field review,” it said in a statement on Thursday.
Mainz can still cope with the wrong decision. The relegation is basically perfect, the gap to the international places is very big. However, Svensson referred to the Augsburg competitors in the relegation battle: Hertha BSC, Arminia Bielefeld and VfB Stuttgart. What are these clubs thinking?
“We’ll talk about it again in peace,” Jöllenbeck announced a conversation with his colleague Stieler. “We all have an interest in penalties like this not standing still.”