The arbitration of the German Deniz Aytekin at Barcelona-PSG (1-6), March 8, 2017 in the round of 16 second leg of the Champions League, has been widely criticized.

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LLUIS GENE / AFP

  • In 2017, referee Deniz Aytekin was struck by the thunderbolt of Parisian supporters for whistling against PSG during the comeback against Barça.

  • We looked to see if this match had cost the German referee dearly.

His name reappeared, unexpectedly, in the middle of last May.

Deniz Aytekin, the famous referee of the remorada in 2017, finally found guilty by UEFA of having whistled anyhow during the Camp Nou disaster.

Why three years later?

And in what framework, exactly?

Impossible to say, for the good reason that it is a very beautiful fake news, yet taken up by many influential media including the

Daily Mail

.

Its origin, a moderately honest tweet from an influential Spanish journalist, citing - without specifying it - an even less honest article from 2017, in which the question of a sanction by the German referee was raised.

It was obviously not.

Let's say it at the outset, Deniz Aytekin has never been penalized for his funny whistles, between the more than generous penalties granted to Barça and those more than obvious forgotten at PSG.

Present in the “elite” list of UEFA referees since 2014, a sort of top 20/25 of the best European whistles, Aytekin has never left it, especially not after the evening at Camp Nou and even less this season, when 'he is treating a long wound.

The list of elite referees a few months after Barça-PSG - Screenshot

"There is no definitive rule, it happens to everyone to crash during a match," explains a former French referee, present for many years on the UEFA referee committee.

If every time that players have missed a match they are no longer starting… You don't kill a referee for a bad match and in general, UEFA is in support behind the referees if they are accused.

"

This is more or less what Alexandre Ceferin, the UEFA boss, explained in 2017: “When something goes wrong, we can discuss it but there is no question of a suspension. .

It is as if a player who misses a penalty is banned or suspended.

"

Especially since UEFA has at least a small part of the responsibility in this story.

As a general rule, the commission takes advantage of return matches considered to be folded in advance - and therefore with less stake - to give a little experience to certain promising referees.

So this PSG-Barça with a 4-0 in the first leg, Aytekin was to be a great springboard for a referee who had so far only officiated in ten Champions League matches, including only one in the final phase, an eighth first leg between Monaco and Arsenal in 2015.

Never nominated on very big games

So UEFA has not let go.

However, she “put it in the fridge,” continues our former referee.

A little rest, that will do him good.

It's a bit diplomatic, you have to see if he was marked by the press campaign around him.

UEFA will never be provocative, we avoid putting it back right away, or in less important matches… ”

For Aytekin, it did not fail.

After Barça-PSG, the German has not touched a European match of the season.

He will return the following fall, but generally for second-class or unbalanced group matches (Maribor-Spartak, Atletico-Qarabaq, etc.).

In the end, since 2017, Aytekin has only made a dozen group matches in the Champions League and the Europa League together, for a single knockout match, an eighth in C3 between Benfica and Zagreb.

It is little, very little, for an elite referee.

His international career has not taken off either.

“For that, it was anyway blocked by Felix Brych, the German star of the refereeing, explains us a connoisseur of the medium.

We can't say either that his career was cut short in the air, he was never one of the top-top whistles ”.

And what does he think of all this?

Impossible to say.

The German referee has never spoken publicly about this meeting and the wave that followed.

“In general, UEFA does not allow public communication,” our sources say.

Sure, but that didn't stop Aytekin from giving interviews to German media.

The most astonishing, in 2019, in the daily Bild, never evokes this Barça-PSG.

"This history of Barça-PSG is not very important in Germany".

He just evokes regrets for an unsullied penalty to Marco Reus while he was still playing in Mönchengladbach and which "has haunted him ever since".

When questioned, the author of the interview Lars Wallrodt ensures that he had not received any request not to mention Barça-PSG, specifying that "this story was not very important in Germany".

Author of a 30-minute immersion documentary with Aytekin for the public channel ARD, director Tom Häussler also confirms that he has chosen not to address the issue.

A public figure, accustomed to the media and public conferences, Aytekin has remained a leading authority in arbitration in his country, where we don't give a damn about what it could have cost PSG.

He was also the best referee in the Bundesliga in 2019, then again last year in an unofficial poll on the Kicker site.

To believe that the PSG really fell on the wrong day.

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