Why Edin Terzic would have been better off keeping quiet
BVB coach Edin Terzic was unable to calm down after the game against league leaders Leverkusen. Totally shaken up emotionally, he indirectly blamed the referee Daniel Siebert for the double point loss. Even his player Brandt knew better than his coach why Terzic was completely off the mark!
"A little more soccer, a little less crying." The words of a soccer fan on the internet summarize in one sentence what even die-hard BVB supporters would have liked to shout at their coach after Sunday evening's match at Bayer Leverkusen (1:1). His angry attack on the match referee, Daniel Siebert, may have successfully distracted from his own performance, but in essence it clearly overstepped the mark. Terzic's player Julian Brandt found the better words than his coach directly after the match: "Yes, there was the penalty scene, but on the whole, Leverkusen clearly deserved to win the game more than we did."
The Borussia Dortmund international himself remained pale for long stretches of the game, as did almost the entire BVB squad, but after the match Julian Brandt was at least able to assess his team's point win at Bayer Leverkusen in a much more confident and differentiated manner than his coach: "I think it would be fatal to only focus on this scene. Because the game lasted ninety minutes, there were perhaps sixteen corners for Leverkusen, plus many chances and shots."
"A clear penalty"?
This side of the game was not important to BVB coach Edin Terzic at the end of the match, or so it seemed from the outside. He had got bogged down in objecting to the controversial scene from the 73rd minute when Karim Adeyemi went to ground in the Bayer penalty area after a duel with the two Leverkusen players Exequiel Palacios and Edmond Tapsoba.
Referee Daniel Siebert did not whistle a penalty for BVB in this situation, as Terzic had hoped and expected, but allowed play to continue without consulting the VAR. This upset the Dortmund coach: "I think it's a contact, a clear penalty. It's always about Karim Adeyemi. He's so fast, he dribbles into this situation at 30 km/h and then all it takes is one contact."
There had indeed been contact on Adeyemi's shin and there have indeed been referees who have awarded a penalty in this situation, but the extremely confident referee Siebert would simply not have awarded a penalty in this situation. And Edin Terzic should have known that. After all, BVB themselves had been lucky that the referee had not awarded Bayer a penalty in the 61st minute after Emre Can had fouled Exequiel Palacios.
A little more humility
As much as Terzic is right in his general criticism of the VAR ("There is no clear line. What is a penalty and what is not"), he was very wrong in his attack on Siebert that evening. The fact that the VAR twice decided not to intervene or to allow play to continue in both situations meant that a clear line in the referee's decision was clearly recognizable at all times.
Edin Terzic would have preferred to remain silent after his team's fortunate draw with league leaders Leverkusen. A little more humility would not have hurt him and his team after the game. At best, his attack on the referee looked more like an attempt at a deliberate diversionary maneuver. At worst, however, Edin Terzic has lost sight of reality. The fact that BVB did not return home from Leverkusen to the Ruhr region with three points on Sunday evening was first and foremost down to the team itself. But Terzic preferred to keep quiet about that. He probably knew exactly why inside.
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Terzic's criticism of the referee could have been avoided, as Bayer 04 Leverkusen also had a potential penalty claim against Borussia Dortmund earlier in the game. Despite the controversial penalty decision, Borussia Dortmund managed to secure a point against the league leaders, a fact that Terzic chose to overlook in his anger. After the game, Bayer 04 Leverkusen was widely believed to have deserved the win more than Dortmund, according to their player Julian Brandt.
Source: www.ntv.de
