The Daily Bee: Post-Match Reactions to Der Klassiker

Good morning, FTW.

Post-Match Reactions

As Bayern Munich’s players celebrated their Bundesliga title on Saturday, Borussia Dortmund’s players and staff trudged into the press room to give their thoughts on the day’s game.

Marco Rose has never hesitated to point out individual mistakes. While he was generally happy with BVB’s attitude during the game and the effort they showed in the first half, he did point out the key mistake from Zagadou that put Dortmund behind by two goals.

We played our attacks to the end after the break and had shots. That was missing in the first half. In addition, we make another very simple mistake and put the opponent down 0:2.

The captain Marco Reus made a similar point: individual mistakes were the team’s achilles heel.

If you look at the goals conceded, it runs through the whole season. There are always individual mistakes. After the goal we were good in the game.

Sebastian Kehl saw the game as a tale of two halves. Although BVB were clearly second best during the first half, they came out strongly in the second half and had three good chances to score.

We saw two different halves, especially after the break we were at eye level and had three chances to equalize.

Kehl, Reus, and Rose also made reference to a particular refereeing decision in the second half that could have tilted the result in BVB’s favor. This means that yet again, it’s time to Monday morning quarterback a referee’s performance in Der Klassiker.

I mean... come on

It makes it a lot easier to criticize a referee’s decision when they come out and admit that they screwed up. That was the case yesterday, when Bundesliga referee Daniel Siebert, who oversaw Saturday’s clash match between Bayern and Borussia Dortmund, admitted to Kicker that he had blown not one, but two big calls during Saturday’s match between Bayern and Borussia Dortmund. The first was this studs-up tackle by Benjamin Pavard on Julian Brandt.

Siebert’s ruling during the game was that Pavard had “won the ball.” This was obviously not the case.

The second and more controversial call was on a challenge by Benjamin Pavard on Jude Bellingham in the penalty box. Pavard did knock the ball loose, but not before tripping Bellingham and bringing him to the turf.

While a Pavard yellow card probably wouldn’t have had a huge impact on the game, a penalty to potentially equalize the score at 2-2 would have been huge. From Siebert’s view he thought that Pavard won the ball, and for whatever reason the VAR official either didn’t look at the play, or didn’t see enough to have Siebert take a look. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why.

Am I mad about all this? No, I wouldn’t say I’m “mad.” Overall I still think Bayern deserved the win. I just think it’s funny that once again, the biggest match in Germany, and one that decided the Bundesliga title, was subject to utterly dreadful refereeing, and there’s absolutely nothing that can be done about it.

Sebastian Kehl and Marco Rose expressed similar attitudes. They were both obviously upset in their post-match interviews, but also espoused a certain resigned acceptance. They know that there’s no point in complaining now, and all that’s left is to hope that it doesn’t happen again.

Personally, I just hope some of these complete fuck-ups start going our way next season.

Footy Scran of the Day

We could all use a palette cleanser, right? Thank the lord for the fine folks at AFC Sunderland. They may have nosedived out of the Premier League, but they know how to cook some Scran:

All I see here is a brown mush of tender, savory, fatty, salty, flavorful deliciousness. Get in my belly.