KOLKATA: A defeated Germany complained about bad referring as Brazil, the winner, counted the gains of its impressive win in the most debated match so far of the ongoing FIFA Under-17 World Cup.
German coach Christian Wueck drew the attention, flying into rage against American referee Jair Marrufo’s “poor supervision” after his team lost the quarterfinal 2-1 against old rival Brazil. Making a direct attack at Marrufo’s intent, Wueck said the referee created the difference in the match, giving advantage to the opponent.
Seemingly unable to accept his team’s defeat, a livid Wueck launched an attack on the standard of the supervision immediately on arrival at the post-match media conference.
“I am sure you watched the game and did see what happened to the eyes of Jan Boller. He was hit by a Brazil player and no one was penalised for that. We have no problems in losing but not in this unfair manner. The difference was the referee in this match,” Wueck did not mince his words.
He introduced defender Boller in place of midfielder Sahverdi Cetin in the 76th minute, apparently looking to strengthen the backline. The German coach was referring to the incident when Boller was hit on his face while going in for a tackle on a Brazilian player. A minute after this Brazilian attacker Paulinho found the winner with a perfect pile-driver to send Germany packing.
Reflecting on how Brazil turned things around, Wueck said the opponents had a better second half but his boys should have got another goal after the break and settled things up.
“We were better in the first half and Brazil did well after the break. But I have to say we should have scored in the second half and lost because of that,” Wueck said.
Germany went into the lead in the first half thanks to a penalty awarded by Marrufo, who hauled up Brazilian defender Lucas Halter for bringing down the German wing-half John Yeboah inside the box.
The standard of refereeing in the tournament had come under attack once before when Ghana coach Samuel Fabin made an angry protest against Algerian referee Mehdi Abid Charef for disallowing a legitimate goal when his team was trying to make a comeback against Mali in the quarterfinal at Guwahati.
The reaction of the defeated coaches was blown away by FIFA’s head of refereeing Massimo Busacca, who said they were trying to cover up their mistakes by blaming the referee.
“I know what happened yesterday in the game because we watch the video after every match. Honestly, it is not my habit to find excuse in life. If we commit a mistake, admit it. But probably it is not the case for everybody,” Busacca said on Monday. “I think there was no blatant case of referring oversight yesterday and so we do not want to lose much time on that,” was how the FIFA referees’ chief brushed aside the coaches’ complains.
When Brazilian coach Carlos Amadeu was asked to comment on Wueck’s complain about poor referring, he said his team believes in a clean game, which is evident in the number of fair-play trophies it has won.
“We have won fair-play awards in Under-15 and Under-17 championships in the past. We had only one yellow card going into this match. To me my role is to see how my players are playing without thinking about what the referee is doing,” Amadeu said.
“I am really happy how we played both physically and mentally,” the Brazil coach added looking ahead to his team’s semifinal against England on Wednesday.
