28-year-old Crystal Palace defender Joachim Andersen can rightly consider himself unlucky now that he has bid farewell to the Euros. At least for a moment he was happy when, shortly after half-time of the round of 16 match between Germany and Denmark, he deftly shot the ball with his left foot, following a pinball situation during a free kick.
So cheer up with your fellow Danes, hug each other. Celebrating the 0-1 in the match in atmospheric Dortmund, which had a 25-minute interruption due to a storm. Germany in command. But no, the goal was disallowed, after an extensive review by the VAR, because midfielder Thomas Delaney was offside by a few centimeters at some point in the situation.
Offside
That’s modern football with VAR, in this case Stuart Attwell, the Briton who had Xavi Simons’ goal against France ruled out for an annoying offside call by Denzel Dumfries. Yes, it’s fairer, they say at one end of the football spectrum. After all, offside is offside. There’s no arguing about that.
But there is also something unreal about it. VAR was introduced to eliminate serious errors in football and correct grotesque forms of injustice. “Clear and obvious errors”, as they are called in union terms. With the exception of offside, suddenly it is no longer a matter of serious errors, but of millimeters, of minimal infractions. Then the accountants, the football accountants, will live their best minutes behind their screen, with their line drawing.
Previously in football, before VAR, the linesman was not allowed to mark in case of doubt about offside, because football lives on goals. There is no football without goals. In addition, the inventors of the game included offside in the rules to frustrate the so-called ball spotter. Otherwise, the field would become “too big”. Disallowing a goal for half-finger offside goes against the foundations of the game and it would be good for the federations to evaluate it in detail, after this European Championship, for example. There are alternative ideas, expressed among others by Marco van Basten, to allow a certain overlap between the bodies.
About the Author
Willem Vissers is a football reporter for from VolkskrantThis is his seventh European Championship for men.
Interpretation
Discussions about VAR also constantly arise in hands, because there is also a form of interpretation. We thus automatically arrive at the second chapter of Joachim Andersen’s unfortunate evening. Shortly after his disallowed goal, he touches a cross very lightly with his hand. Almost no one in the stadium will have seen it, but the VAR will. And so Germany receives a penalty, taken by Kai Havertz. Instead of 0-1 it is 1-0. It’s almost sad to see Andersen suffer like this. He doesn’t understand it. The Danes’ good resistance was immediately broken, especially when Jamal Musiala dribbled towards the goal alone twenty minutes before the end and cleverly placed the ball into the far corner. Andersen pursues him in vain.
The mediocre Germany desperately needed Havertz’s goal to reach the quarter-finals of a tournament for the first time in eight years. The Danes, led by Christian Eriksen in his 134th international cap (now the country’s record holder), played well until the break after a furious start by the Germans, and had some excellent chances through Rasmus Højlund, once after a careless save by Nico Schlotterbeck. Eriksen, who disappeared from the Euros three years ago due to cardiac arrest and miraculously recovered, created some chances. One for himself, thanks to a beautiful guess. Especially before the break, the Danes had some almost perfect counterattacks. Sometimes they put the Germans under a lot of pressure, other times they retreated a lot to escape very quickly from their tight defence.
Storm
The VAR did not cause the only interruption of the evening. The longest delay lasted 25 minutes, during the first half because of a storm. The Germans were at their best in their furious start, with Schlotterbeck’s goal disallowed after a corner kick by Toni Kroos, with a powerful and beautiful header. But again the VAR did its job. Referee Michael Oliver disallowed the goal due to a foul by Joshua Kimmich.
The Danes go home without a win, after three draws in the group. The Germans under national coach Julian Nagelsmann are now in the quarter-finals, where they will face the winners of Spain, Georgia. They will probably have to play better than they did on Saturday in Dortmund.