The Bundesliga match Hertha BSC against Eintracht Frankfurt is entertaining. Before that, the Berlin fans convince with a wonderful choreo and in the end the capital city club is almost empty-handed again. Then the Cologne basement reports and interferes again almost encroaching on a game.
In the 89th minute of the game Hertha BSC against Eintracht Frankfurt happened what Hertha BSC always happens. After a good game, they were left empty-handed again, having lost the game in front of 44,694 spectators. After Suat Serdar took the lead early on, Hertha brought the game 1-0 into the break against Frankfurt, who were not quite up to par, only to concede the equalizer after new signing Filip Uremovic lost the ball unnecessarily through Daichi Kamada.
Hertha and Frankfurt then missed numerous opportunities to win the game. Sometimes they shot each other, sometimes their nerves gave out and sometimes someone fell into reserve. It was a good game of football between two teams that will most likely have nothing to do with the extended top division at the end of the season. It was not an intoxicating game, one of 306 and therefore exemplary precisely because of its averageness.
Because what then happened in the 89th minute and the ones that followed was as normal and average as everything related to the VAR in the Bundesliga. So what happened anyway? Hertha keeper Oliver Christensen brought down Rafael Borré in the penalty area and referee Frank Willenborg awarded a penalty straight away.
Then it got confusing. The decision dragged on. Willenborg walked into the review area and looked at the images, which showed him that Christensen had indeed touched Borré, but that contact might not necessarily have been relevant to the fall that followed. The scene was shown to him again and again, and journalists in the press gallery also bent over their monitors and discussed it. The moment didn’t get any clearer.
“I saw in the pictures that there is a touch, but this is not the cause of the player falling. For me it’s a stripe,” said Willenborg after the game on Sky. “It’s important to me that the right decision is made in the end. I take the time to evaluate it correctly. I didn’t want to miss seeing the right attitude. It was also important to me that the decision came out , which also suits the game management. I whistle very generously, let the game go and I wouldn’t have whistle that small touch in midfield.”
We can say with a clear conscience that Willenborg made the right decision. He didn’t want to give a “cucumber penalty”, he later told the Frankfurt keeper Kevin Trapp. At least that’s what the national goalkeeper said. Actually, Willenborg shouldn’t have made the decision at all. After all, the VAR rules state that an intervention only has to take place in the event of a clear wrong decision. But that was not the penalty whistle. “As I understand it, the video referee is there to intervene in the event of a clear wrong decision. But if you then have to watch what feels like ten minutes, it’s no longer a wrong decision for me, so I don’t know what he’s up to looked at it”, Trapp wondered on behalf of everyone and doubted his VAR knowledge.
The whistle itself was bold, a little exaggerated and might have been a little discussed later. The people of Frankfurt would probably have been happy about the victory, the Berliners resigned themselves to their fate at Hertha. But the intervention, which should not have happened, decided the result of the game. The VAR continues to be football’s biggest nuisance by any measure. Set out to make football fairer on the field, he failed miserably.
He causes confusion week after week, turns out to be only a shift of the problem into the Cologne basement, makes the game less attractive for the spectators in the stadium, robs them of the elementary moment of spontaneous joy for the fans and is more difficult to calculate in the decision-making process than Lionel Messi at his best. It should be abolished because it cannot be objective, because it only offers new scope for interpretation and has equipped the game of football with a completely superfluous new element. It exalts the element of justice and is the opposite of it. It is not just, but arbitrary.
Frankfurt is therefore still waiting for the first Bundesliga win since mid-March 2022. There are now ten games for the Europa League winner, who wants to see himself as eleventh in the table last season. A realistic assessment by coach Oliver Glasner, who still has to find a solution to Filip Kosti?’s departure. Without Kostic, Eintracht was a shadow of past European Cup battles, especially in the first half. Not everything is bad for the Eagles, who in Randal Kolo Muani have an adorable ball thief and crowd favorite in their ranks and have got a big star in world champion Mario Götze. But he is still looking for a connection. He made just 43 touches in 65 minutes, most of them uninspired and far from the dangerous zone.
His one-two attempt with the weak Ansgar Knauff outside the penalty area was significant. Instead of putting the ball behind the defence, the 30-year-old brought it into the defense and a little later he waved the action away in frustration in the 28th minute. Referee Willenborg had seen a foul afterwards. He only got 70 percent of his 30 passes, and Götze didn’t even aim for the difficult balls. In this form, the road back to the national team will be too long for him.
There was silence in the stands for the first 23 minutes in the Frankfurt block. Only then did the loud Ultra faction march into the block to shouts of “Hurrah, hurrah, the people of Frankfurt are here”. From then on they dutifully rewound their program, but a half-filled Olympic stadium is not a Camp Nou and everyday life in the league is difficult. The reason for the delay? They had simply left too late, it was said afterwards in one of the stuffy trains. Quite possible.
The Berliners, on the other hand, had little to complain about that day. There was even something like a spirit of optimism. Despite the two bankruptcies at the beginning of the season, Hertha didn’t want to spoil their first home game after almost relegation. Well before kick-off, the first 2023 doner kebabs went to Kevin-Prince Boateng. He had promised this when he extended his contract and the world star from Gesundbrunnen who was unable to play kept it. Later, he couldn’t get enough of the impressive choreo prepared by the fans in honor of the club’s 130th anniversary. With stoic composure and widespread support, Hertha supporters are no longer willing to be the laughing stock of the league this season. They do what they can, the rest is not in their hands, but in those of the club management and of course the feet of the players.
In any case, the derby defeat was followed by an unusually quiet week by Hertha standards. Except for a dropout by Fredi Bobic in an interview. And, what only became known after the game, the suspension of long-time goalkeeper Rune Jarstein. The 37-year-old, who has not been lucky since the pandemic began, is said to have lost his nerve. He will probably leave the club after eight years. “It’s a shame because it hits a person who has been here for a long time and it doesn’t go unnoticed,” explained Fredi Bobic. Sporty, he played no role anyway. With keeper Christensen, a successor seems to have been found for the time being. And that was part of the story of the game. “That’s not enough for a penalty in the Bundesliga,” said Christensen. The thing with the VAR remains pointless.
