Referees are sometimes like football players. They are in top shape, have prepared well for a game – but then everything goes wrong, stupid penalty whistle, own goal just before the break, out of the tournament. Whereby referees at least have the penalty whistle in their own hands. But sometimes that doesn’t help them either.
At the 2018 World Cup in Russia, Felix Brych was assigned to the preliminary round match between Switzerland and Serbia, he whistled flawlessly, but after a confusing wrestling match, the Munich referee decided: no penalty for Serbia.
Coach Mladen Krstajic raged after the game that he would “send Brych to The Hague to try him as they tried us”; The Hague is the seat of the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The derailment was frowned upon by Fifa – but Brych was no longer involved in the World Cup.
This time it is different. Brych, 45, has already led four games at the European Championship, and now Uefa has also nominated him for the semi-finals between Italy and Spain at Wembley. It is the high point of his career, which he owes – in addition to his precise game management – to Jogi Löw. Just because the German team is no longer there, it’s Germany’s best referee.