Julian Nagelsmann had already shaken his head before referee Tobias Stieler arrived in front of the screen. The FC Bayern Munich coach watched the two disputed scenes on the tablet in the coach’s bench and only his point of view was confirmed anyway.
“I had good vision both times and so it was relatively easy for me to see that both were penalties,” said Nagelsmann after Bayern’s 2-1 defeat in the Bundesliga at Bayer Leverkusen: “The first time I thought so that Adli was hit on the heel. The second time I knew it wasn’t a swallow.”
Wrong decisions withdrawn
In both cases, Stieler initially gave Leverkusen’s Amine Adli a yellow card. Both times he took them back and apologized and awarded penalties that enabled Exequiel Palacios to secure Leverkusen’s 2-1 win. The referee was relieved afterwards. “I was saved. And the game was saved too,” he said: “Because otherwise two wrong decisions would have been made. That’s why I take it with humor today.”
Adli, who promised Stieler his jersey, saw it the same way. “Today I’m glad that VAR intervened,” said the Frenchman. During the decision-making process, he was “naturally tense and a little nervous”: “But now we’re just happy.” After the first decision, Adli pointed to his worn-out shoe and then threw it so vehemently on the grass that he was lucky not to be prematurely sent off.
“I’ve been in football for a long time, but it rarely happens that you take your shoe off yourself,” said Leverkusen’s sporting director Simon Rolfes with a laugh. At the second yellow card, Adli just laughed and indicated to Stieler that he would have to correct himself again when he looked at it.
Nagelsmann: “Bitter, but fair”
In the end, however, the Leverkusen team had long been reconciled with the referee in their triumphal frenzy. “He doesn’t have to apologize,” said captain and goalkeeper Lukas Hradecky: “I have to commend him. He corrected himself twice, that shows his greatness.”
And Bayern did not quarrel about the unfortunate circumstances of the event. “If it’s checked through the video evidence, I think it will have been clear twice,” said goalscorer Joshua Kimmich. And Nagelsmann also forgivingly drew a line under the curious topic. “I’m generally a friend of the VAR,” said the coach: “Today there were two penalties, so everything was in the spirit of justice, so it was bitter but fair.”
The Bayern coach even suffered with Stieler. “It also took the pressure off the referee,” he said. “Imagine if he had let the two yellow cards stand, we might have won 1-0 and hadn’t gotten two clear penalties against us.” Not only the people of Leverkusen would have complained, but also the people of Dortmund. In the event of a Bayern victory, they would have gone into second place at the summit on April 1, but now they are leading the table.
