When those involved were still filled with the adrenaline of a truly wild ride through the wide world of football emotions, no one suspected how far the debates about referee Felix Zwayer would go on Sunday. After the referee had debated a controversial penalty whistle in the stadium, in the living rooms and in the television studios, the "Bild" newspaper first reported on Sunday about a criminal complaint that the referee, who works for the German Football Association (DFB) Observer Marco Haase has pitted against Jude Bellingham.

The young Englishman had said after the 3-2 defeat against FC Bayern on the Scandinavian streaming service Viaplay: “You give a referee who has already postponed games the biggest game in Germany.

What do you expect? ”On Sunday morning, the video with the short sentences had been viewed almost two million times.

The damage to image is not only enormous for Zwayer.

After this game, the whole Bundesliga has a reputation for being not only more boring than other competitions, but also more dubious.

In fact, Zwayer was involved in the famous Hoyzer scandal in 2005, he had accepted 300 euros before a game between Wuppertal and Werder Bremen II, combined with the request that as a line judge "avoid critical situations for Wuppertaler SV".

That is in a judgment of the DFB sports court.

In the abyss of sport

Zwayer has now been rehabilitated.

Because Bellingham has now dug out this old thing, proceedings for libel, defamation and defamation could be opened, and the DFB control committee is also investigating.

With that, this game, which had been breathtakingly beautiful for an hour, has finally arrived in the abyss of sport.

“I would like to talk more about football.

I saw a real top game, it went up, down, with chances on both sides, ”said Marco Rose when he didn't know about the Bellingham twist.

The Dortmund coach did not want to speak of a preliminary decision in the title fight: “The season is still long”, the two best teams in the league have “already acted at eye level”, although BVB “simply has to get better” “in order to smell up there permanently ".

The defense allows way too many chances, but this topic is something for quieter days.

Now it was about the referees, who, to the annoyance of Dortmund, did not even check the review area after a duel between Lucas Hernández and Marco Reus in the Munich penalty area when the score was 2-2.

Here Zwayer had seen "a contact in the upper body area", "contact can take place there," he said later.

An argument that Jochen Drees, project manager for the video evidence, supported the next day.

Both Zwayer and Tobias Welz, his assistant in Cologne, overlooked the fact that Hernández had hit Reus' upper body with his arm and hand and that there was also contact on the leg.

The Dortmunders agreed that Hernández had clearly fouled Reus, even the Munich coach Julian Nagelsmann said: "There have been referees who would have given that." But this scene, which should have been examined for an offside position for Haaland, would not have been a big deal had it not been for the other decision, in which a basic problem the referees had in their work with the images became apparent.

After a handball by Mats Hummels in his own penalty area, Zwayer kept looking at a small section of the situation in the review area, forwards and backwards. You could see how Hummels moves into the trajectory of the ball, which then falls onto his arm, which is actually quite widely splayed. The video assistant told him "that Hummels stretched his arm away from the body in an unnatural position and in the end clearly defended the ball with his elbow," reported Zwayer later.

That was exactly what the pictures seemed to confirm. Rose, however, had the whole situation in mind when he said: “It starts with Thomas Müller's hand on Mats Hummels, Mats tries to protect himself a bit, which is very natural, stumbles, even sees the ball no longer, dives somewhere, and then the ball falls on his hand. "

If Zwayer's assistant had shown an excerpt from the situation and described it with the undoubtedly correct words of Rose, the decision would very likely have been different. With the statement that Hummels had "clearly fended off the ball with his elbow", the referees instead gave the impression that the defender had acted with firm intent. Since the beginning of the season, the question of the motive for a handball should have been the focus of the considerations. In order to accuse the defense chief of intent in this scene, however, a good portion of imagination is required.

In any case, Dortmund have reasons to feel that they have been treated unfairly again in a game against Munich.

As in the duel in spring 2020, which is essential for the championship title, when Bayern were very lucky because the video referee overlooked a very clear handball by Jerome Boateng in their own penalty area.

Bellingham's claim that something goes wrong with the referees when BVB plays against Bayern has a history, and it is likely to have consequences.