Eintracht striker Rafael Santos Borré was the first to leave the pitch in Berlin. And stormed into the dressing room, i.e. avoided going into the curve to the fans of Eintracht Frankfurt and also stormed past the journalists. First of all: no comment. He was seething. But then he blurted out. “Did he touch the ball or didn’t he touch it?” the Colombian called and said Hertha goalkeeper Oliver Christensen: “What was the rule then?” said it and was gone.
The scene that rattled him came in the 89th minute and left Santos Borré feeling cheated of a possible goal and win at Hertha BSC. As he stood ready to take a penalty awarded for foul play, referee Frank Willenborg was called to the screen by the video referee. And there he studied the stills and slow motion until he revised himself. “I see in the pictures that there is a touch, but that’s not the cause of the player falling. For me it’s a streak,” Willenborg later said.
The referee said to him that he “didn’t want to give a cucumber penalty”, reported Eintracht national goalkeeper Kevin Trapp. And wondered: “As I understand it, the video referee is there to intervene in the event of a clear wrong decision. But if you then have to watch what feels like ten minutes, it’s no longer a wrong decision for me, so I don’t know what he was looking at.”
The anger at Frankfurt was all the greater when Hertha’s goalkeeper Oliver Christensen confessed in one respect and supported Santos Borrés’ version. The Dane openly admitted to having touched the Eintracht striker. But: Just like Sandro Schwarz, who scored his first point as Hertha coach, Christensen also found that the touch would not have been enough to impose such a serious judgment as a penalty. “Not every physical contact is a foul,” said Schwarz.
The fact that the penalty was annulled by way of revision was doubly important for the coach. Because a possible 1: 2 would have fueled the debates about a false start again. As a reminder: Hertha was eliminated in the cup by Braunschweig Eintracht (goalless in the second division); On the first day of play, the club from Berlin’s Westend in Köpenick lost to neighbors 1.FC Union. Compared to the derby, Hertha presented themselves against Eintracht more determined and – initially – also more efficient. The fact that Eintracht had difficulties developing an attitude towards this game played into the hands of the Berliners.
Less than three minutes were played when Daichi Kamada lost a ball to Hertha’s Chidera Ejuke in his own half. The Nigerian passed to the right-hand corner flag – and there Dodi Lukébakio (in a great mood, by the way) had so much time to prepare his cross that it would not have been noticed if he had put in a pedicure session. Midfielder Suat Serdar converted a header to make it 1-0 – and let the radius of Eintracht coach Oliver Glasner’s jugular grow to the size of a bamboo cane. “Our tackling in the first half was just disastrous,” he said.
Even more: The impression was gained that Eintracht was finding it difficult to get used to the gray everyday life of the Bundesliga again after the continental festival weeks and months. As if the Europa League victory was still a factor that invites the Eintracht pros to a dream that Glasner pushes open. “We can’t always talk about Europe. We were eleventh in the Bundesliga and have now lost two key players in Filip Kostic and Martin Hinteregger. If we want to improve, we have to play better than today.” Eintracht played, after all, better than the 1: 6 against Bayern. But who knows what would have happened if Hertha hadn’t shown the same generosity after the break as Eintracht did at the start of the game.
Because in the 48th minute Hertha’s new central defender Filip Uremovic let the ball be stolen in midfield, the outstanding Eintracht striker Randal Kolo Muani initiated a counterattack and Daichi Kamada completed it. It remained 1-1 despite a series of chances and mistakes by both sides. “Anyone could have won the game,” Glasner said. “In the end, the referee made the decision because he made a mistake, just as both teams made mistakes.” What at Hertha – at least in relation to the role of the referee – was of course seen differently.