Bayern Munich v Atletico Madrid

[Kes]

Entertaining match, but the cheating and gamesmanship from Atletico spoiled it a bit for me. Two occasions when Atletico players should have been cautioned for kicking/punching the ball away and the Turkish referee did nothing. Bad decision for the Atletico penalty too.
I thought the referee was poor.

 

[Mooseybaby]

Going to stick my proverbial on the block and say the Atletico penalty wasn't as bad a decision as BT want everyone to believe. No doubt initial contact was outside the box, but given the speed Torres was moving and the secondary contact as Torres was going down which was inside the box, can understand why it was given.

No doubts about the Bayern penalty, great decision, shame referees that are brave enough to punish the persistent and blatant rugby tackling inside the box are few and far between.

As for the penalties themselves, both very poor and relatively easy saves for the keepers.

AR also got it spot on with the onside/offisde call for Atletico's break away goal.

 

[Kes]

Going to stick my proverbial on the block and say the Atletico penalty wasn't as bad a decision as BT want everyone to believe. No doubt initial contact was outside the box, but given the speed Torres was moving and the secondary contact as Torres was going down which was inside the box, can understand why it was given.

I can understand why it was given mate, but the contact and foul took place outside the penalty area. Torres fell into it. It was still a wrong decision which luckily had no bearing on the tie overall. Was there even one caution (apart from Bayern's penalty) in spite of all the gamesmanship and time wasting going on?

 

[Bantam Ron]

Fantastic AR decision. Looked well offside at full speed but he got it spot on in a very pressured situation.

 

[SLI39]

I can understand why it was given mate, but the contact and foul took place outside the penalty area. Torres fell into it. It was still a wrong decision which luckily had no bearing on the tie overall. Was there even one caution (apart from Bayern's penalty) in spite of all the gamesmanship and time wasting going on?

Agreed; I think it's a worrying state of affairs when there appears to be a positive correlation between gamesmanship and success. And I don't accept that this is par for the course for teams with smaller resources. If the referees are genuinely unable to deal with such offences--and I would argue they can because most fall under misconduct/persistent infringement/unsporting behaviour--the football associations in Europe and separate countries need to consider, rather than trivial fines, disqualifications and points deductions.

 

[cdsman]

Agree with the comments about some of the gamemanship, mainly by Athletico, but I did feel a bit sorry for them with regards to the multi ball system being used. Usually when the ball goes out of play, you do get a few seconds to recover and get back into shape, but with another ball arriving immediately the first one went out of play, there was never any breaks. If the ball goes into the stands for a goal kick, is the keeper really required to take the kick immediately just because the home team have given him a different ball to use! Not suggesting that they should be allowed to waste time excessively, but there would usually be a few seconds before the ball comes back....

I assume that the home team gets to decide on multi ball / single ball? Would Bayern have been allowed to change to single ball if they'd gone ahead?

 

[Kes]

Agree with the comments about some of the gamemanship, mainly by Athletico, but I did feel a bit sorry for them with regards to the multi ball system being used. Usually when the ball goes out of play, you do get a few seconds to recover and get back into shape, but with another ball arriving immediately the first one went out of play, there was never any breaks. If the ball goes into the stands for a goal kick, is the keeper really required to take the kick immediately just because the home team have given him a different ball to use! Not suggesting that they should be allowed to waste time excessively, but there would usually be a few seconds before the ball comes back....

I assume that the home team gets to decide on multi ball / single ball? Would Bayern have been allowed to change to single ball if they'd gone ahead?

At the end of the day, a team in their situation will do whatever they do I suppose. My concern was with the referee ignoring blatant cautionable offences. Two sping to mind. The first was for a free kick given to Bayern on half way close to the right touchline after which the Atletico player stopped, put his foot on the ball, and then dleiberately backheeled it some 20 yards away down the touchline. The whole stadium went into uproar about it (it wasn't even subtle) but the ref did nothing.
A few minutes later, Torres was chasing a long lofted clearance near the same touchline which was going out of play. He followed the ball out of play and then was seen to punch the ball away further down the line. Again, the referee did nothing. I was really surprised and disappointed with this, particularly since I've always (rightly or wrongly) considered overseas officials to be a bit more anal about this sort of transgression than we tend to be over here. The Turkish referee was poor, in my opinion that is.