“Zero percent” is a clear statement. “Zero percent” sounds unquestionable. However, the expert who published this expertise on the legality of a foul penalty in Eindhoven on Tuesday evening is not considered to be ultimately objective. The assessor’s name is Mats Hummels and he is the Borussia Dortmund defender whose tackle in the 54th minute resulted in a foul penalty, which significantly influenced the result of the first leg of the round of 16 in the Champions League in Eindhoven. Hummels was angry about the penalty that PSV attacker Luuk de Jong converted in the 56th minute to make the final score 1-1: “Zero percent penalty!”
In this context, the zero is to be understood as a demonstrative belief. Hummels wanted to make it clear that he has no doubt that he is right here. And he’s probably right. However, you can never really say that definitively and conclusively, because every controversial penalty scene can be interpreted in any direction with many details. However, in this case it seemed quite strange that a seemingly normal tackle with clear contact with the ball was assessed as a foul.
First, the admittedly uncompromising Hummels tipped the ball off the side of the foot of Eindhoven’s Malik Tillman – incidentally a loanee from FC Bayern. Hummels touched the ball not just subtly, but powerfully. Afterwards, of course, because his whole body slid into his opponent, he also caused Tillman to fall. The Nuremberg native fell to the ground with a cry of pain. However, this split-second touch should actually play no role in evaluating the overall scene. Hummels clearly played the ball with his tackle and did not roughly push his opponent from behind.
The Eindhoven players around him just laughed, Hummels reported afterwards (“They all grinned at me for minutes”). But this information with the aim of a polemical emotionalization was of course not objective and cannot be used as an argument. With this observation, Hummels only wanted to further discredit the decision of the Serbian referee Srdjan Jovanovic and the Slovenian video assistant Nejc Kajtazovic.
The 1-1 draw in Eindhoven isn’t even a bad result for BVB considering the second leg in Dortmund on March 13th. If the superior Eindhoven team had used just a few of their many scoring opportunities, Borussia could have clearly lost this game. Dortmund didn’t perform well. They tried to slow down the game, especially at the beginning, they played passively and didn’t want to let Eindhoven get going. But even that was only moderately successful. Their surprising opening goal by ex-PSV striker Donyell Malen to make it 1-0 in the 24th minute played into their hands. In the end, the equalizer was a fairly fair result. Nevertheless, Dortmund’s anger over the controversial penalty was understandable.
Penalty or not? This is what the moment between Hummels and Tillman looked like from the rear perspective.
(Photo: John Thys/AFP)
The fact that they felt disadvantaged in the Champions League for the third time in twelve months sparked conspiracy thoughts in some Dortmunders. In March 2023 there was a controversial hand penalty (converted by Kai Havertz) against BVB in a 2-0 defeat in the second leg of the round of 16 at Chelsea, and another such penalty (converted by Kylian Mbappé) in a 0-2 loss in September 2023 -Defeat in the first group game at Paris St. Germain. “It’s slowly getting enough,” complained BVB boss Hans-Joachim Watzke after what was now the third controversial case.
“We can correct this in three weeks,” says BVB coach Terzic, somewhat relaxed
Shortly after the final whistle in Eindhoven, on the sidelines of the exclusive streaming service Amazon Prime, Matthias Sammer, an expert who also acts as an advisor at Borussia Dortmund, generalized controversial referee decisions against German teams in the European Cup to a disadvantage. He said: “I would like to advocate showing more personality in international committees, naming things clearly, clearly standing up to people again and not putting up with it.”
Before Hummels dismissed the penalty as a “joke” on social media on the bus ride home at night, coach Edin Terzic himself had raised such an unpleasant incident as an urgent review of a learning level check at the press conference. He said: “It was a big issue for us in winter preparation that we took too many penalties in the first half of the season.” As a coach, Terzic even has a solution to this problem that doesn’t involve relying on the goodwill of a referee: “It’s best not to get a penalty in the first place by not letting the opponent get into the box.” The situation with Hummels, said Terzic, only came about because “we didn’t defend it well beforehand.”
Terzic also sounded somewhat relaxed because the controversial scene did not lead to an irreversible consequence. “We can correct this in three weeks,” he said, looking ahead to the second leg on March 13th. On that Wednesday evening in the BVB stadium, that much is clear, the Dortmund people’s soul will examine every penalty area scene and every penalty decision much more critically than they already have.