Technical breakdown in St. Pauli bankruptcy
Offside technique gives wrong result
November 1, 2025 – 8:09 p.mReading time: 2 minutes
FC St. Pauli suffered a rough slap against Gladbach. The referees also had more trouble than usual – because the technology was on strike.
FC St. Pauli is currently suffering from more than just sports. The technology at the Hamburg Bundesliga club is anything but smooth. In the 0:4 (0:2) defeat against Borussia Mönchengladbach, the semi-automatic offside technology delivered an incorrect result on the first goal for the guests by Haris Tabaković (15th).
But that wasn’t the only failure: When St. Pauli coach Alexander Blessin was making his statement about the sixth defeat in a row at the press conference, the lights went out in the room. “Yeah, that’s how I feel right now,” he said. After a short while it became light again.
The offside technology sparked more discussion. “Of course it’s a nuisance because you pay to get something,” said St. Pauli President Oke Göttlich on the pay-TV channel Sky. “If you don’t get that, then you have to at least be able to ask yourself whether you might get the money back at some point.”
For the third time, the semi-automatic offside technology at Millerntor did not work. A DFB statement about the scene read out by the broadcaster said: “When checking the offside decision in the 15th minute, the semi-automatic offside technology unfortunately delivered an incorrect result because an offside line was drawn on the wrong defender.”
The video assistant discovered this during the obligatory plausibility check and then carried out the check manually. “I’m curious to see what arguments the referee GmbH, which we have provided with a lot more money this season, will find as to why it is,” said Göttlich.
However, the technical glitch did not have any influence on the outcome of the game. The defeat could not be glossed over, “not even by a lack of goal-line technology,” he admitted. “But it’s very absurd that we can’t get the technological resources we pay for up and running.”