After the wrong decision in the Bundesliga game between VfL Bochum and Borussia Dortmund, the discussion flared up again as to whether football coaches could “challenges“ should receive.
In other sports, it is already common for referees to be forced to reassess contentious scenes on the monitor.
Steffen Baumgart, coach of 1. FC Köln, spoke in the specialist magazine “foosball” for this: “In such cases, in which clearly wrong decisions are made, coaches should be given this opportunity. Once per half would make sense.”
Schalke coach Thomas Reis also advocated a change in connection with the video assistant referee in football. The “challenge” could “to be a possibility”. It’s about “Optimize processes”.
During the game of championship candidate Borussia Dortmund on Friday (April 28, 2023), Bochum defender Danilo Soares clearly fouled Karim Adeyemi in the penalty area, which referee Sascha Stegemann later conceded. However, the referee had judged this differently live and was neither corrected by the video assistant nor asked to watch the scene again from the sidelines. The Dortmund team also reacted angrily to an alleged handball in the Bochum penalty area and an alleged foul before VfL made it 1-0. Sports director Sebastian Kehl even claimed: “Today things didn’t go well here.”
Brych: “A challenge wouldn’t do anything”
Felix Brych spoke out against a “challenge”. In the show “Focus on Sports” of Bayerischer Rundfunk, the Bundesliga referee said: “I don’t think a ‘challenge’ would do anything.” This would only cause the problem “relocated”, and the so-called video evidence is not accepted. He is still rejected by many when it comes to football, in contrast to supporters of other sports.
The “challenge” in tennis, for example, has long been accepted, but it also benefits from the fact that black and white decisions are always involved.
Depending on the world association
Discussions about introducing a “Challenge” are as old as the VAR, which was introduced in Germany for the 2017/18 season. At the beginning of the current season, Jochen Drees, former referee and now head of innovation at the DFB, said: “I’m always open to discussions about improvements and developments in the field of video assistants.” However, the German association is also dependent on the world association: “But we are also bound by what FIFA tells us to do. The introduction of a challenge option is currently not being pursued there.“
Italy’s football association FIGC had already proposed introducing a challenge in 2020, but this was rejected by the International Football Association Board (IFAB). “Everything is checked by the video assistant. How should a coach recognize that better? The referees are experts in the rules, the coaches are not.”said IFAB managing director Lukas Brud at sportschau.de at the time.