Instead of staying true to their vows to respect the match officials at the European Championship, several coaches in Austria and Switzerland seem to be queuing up to condemn them as one-sided incompetents and grandstanders.
The men with the whistles and flags enjoyed a relatively peaceful start to the tournament, somewhat protected by UEFA’s campaign for players and coaches to show respect to the officials.
But that truce was blown apart on Monday by the rare spectacle of two coaches — Germany’s Joachim Loew and Austria’s Josef Hickersberger — being sent into the stands at the same time for bickering with the fourth official.
PHOTO: AFP
One coach even made physical contact with a fourth official, who has the task of policing the technical areas out of which coaches are not meant to tread. Turkey’s Fatih Terim pushed an official during a match against the Czech Republic, while Loew stood face-to-face with another in Vienna on Tuesday.
Criticism and confrontation are no longer a rarity.
In the defining moment of Poland’s first ever appearance at the tournament, English referee Howard Webb awarded Austria a late penalty after ruling that midfielder Mariusz Lewandowski pulled on Sebastian Proedl’s shirt. The tournament co-hosts converted the ensuing penalty kick to earn a 1-1 draw.
Webb penalized an offense that frequently goes unpunished, but UEFA had warned teams in advance that penalty area fouling would be punished.
“The match versus Austria — what happened in the last part — has affected a lot of the players and it was not easy for me, and more than ever not easy for them, to get out of this deception they had,” Poland coach Leo Beenhakker said. “These guys are human.”
“It’s not that you push a button and they run like a computer or a robot,” he said.
Loew and Hickersberger were banished to the stands by the referee after they appeared to bicker with the fourth official shortly before half-time of Germany’s 1-0 win on Monday.
“Increasingly we’ve been having problems with the fourth official over the past two years,” Loew said. “I just told him I want to be able to concentrate on my job and not listen to his comments all the time. I may have been a bit loud at the end. I may have stepped out of the zone at some point, I really don’t know now.”
“But I don’t think it’s right to inhibit the coach in doing his job,” he said.
On Tuesday Greece coach Otto Rehhagel launched a fierce attack on referees at the tournament, accusing them of being too strict with coaches while failing to safeguard the welfare of the players.
“The referees should take greater care protecting the players and stop sending coaches to the stands,” he said.
“In the match against Russia, our player [Fanis] Gekas was badly injured and the referee did not even stop the match,” Rehhagel said referring to Saturday’s game.
“But when you tell the referee something, then he will most likely send you to the stands,” he said in reference to Loew and Hickersberger.
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