The Champions League journey is over for Bayern Munich. After an enthralling 5-4 first leg vs. Paris Saint-Germain, a 1-1 draw in Munich means that the current holders of the trophy go on to Budapest at the end of the month for a date with Arsenal in the final.
Ousmane Dembélé scored in the third minute for Luis Enrique’s side while Harry Kane’s stoppage time equalizer proved to be nothing more than a mere consolation for the German Rekordmeister, providing a very short period of hope before the final
whistle went on a night that was filled with frustration for Vincent Kompany and his side.
The 1-1 scoreline does not tell the full tale from the Allianz Arena, as there was once again a great deal of controversy. Much like Alphonso Davies’ penalty concession in Paris, handball decisions were at the heart of drama. Nuno Mendes escaped a second yellow midway through the first half after Portuguese referee João Pinheiro incorrectly whistled Konrad Laimer for a handball for a deliberate-looking, outstretched right arm of Mendes handled Laimer’s flick on. Shortly after that incident that had Kompany and the Bayern bench completely bemused, Marquinhos fired a clearance from his own box into the extended arm of teammate João Neves, who escaped a penalty concession.
Former DFB referee Manuel Gräfe, who has often been offering his takes on social media for controversial decisions in big matches, offered his thoughts on the Neves incident, saying that he feels Bayern should have been awarded a penalty:
Sorry, but this is all just a joke now… The arm goes into the flight path & this time even fully extended at shoulder height & also only after (!) the ball was struck. That’s already 100-percent a penalty, but even more so in the context of the first leg – madness!
Something like this is a penalty kick & must always be a penalty kick. The rules aren’t meant for referees and officials, but for football—the footballers and the football itself demands a penalty here, and rightly so!! And here it even aligns explicitly, in black and white, with the overarching rulebook! Specific clarifications from UEFA/FIFA are merely subordinate points! And they naturally assume a natural position, but not that someone intentionally raises their arm into the flight path… with Cucurella, back then I was also the only expert/DFB referee who said it was clearly punishable, and months later UEFA admitted it… That’s how it’ll be here too…. If not, you’d have to replace the referees and officials at FIFA and UEFA, because what happened today must, with clear premise & guidelines for referees in the sense of a uniform line, always be punishable!!!
For the sake of the argument, it is the Handling the Ball section in the IFAB rulebook in Law 12 that deals with the Marquinhos/Neves incident. More specifically, it’s whether or not Neves makes his body bigger with the raised, extended arm in the situation, which Gräfe feels he did.
For the purposes of determining handball offences, the upper boundary of the arm is in line with the bottom of the armpit. Not every touch of a player’s hand/arm with the ball is an offence.
It is an offence if a player:
- deliberately touches the ball with their hand/arm, for example moving the hand/arm towards the ball
- touches the ball with their hand/arm when it has made their body unnaturally bigger. A player is considered to have made their body unnaturally bigger when the position of their hand/arm is not a consequence of, or justifiable by, the player’s body movement for that specific situation. By having their hand/arm in such a position, the player takes a risk of their hand/arm being hit by the ball and being penalised
- scores in the opponents’ goal:
- directly from their hand/arm, even if accidental, including by the goalkeeper
- immediately after the ball has touched their hand/arm, even if accidental
If you are looking for more Bayern Munich and German national team coverage, check out the latest episodes of Bavarian Podcast Works, which you can get on Acast, Spotify, Apple, or any leading podcast distributor…
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