Reis sounds off on refereeing following latest 0-0: “What an absolute joke!”
By Peter Vice @ViseytheSS
FC Schalke 04 coach Thomas Reis and club licensing boss Gerald Asamoah had to regret their luck with the refereeing decisions after the 0-0 draw on Friday evening. S04 captain Maya Yoshida and keeper Ralf Fährmann also conducted interviews after the game.
Three points from the last three league games is not the worst-case scenario for a team at the bottom of the table. A series of three 0-0 draws in a row still speaks against a team threatened with relegation like FC Schalke 04. The opponents may have been kept out of the back net. Newly designated goalkeeping starter Ralf Fährmann may be celebrating his third straight clean sheet. Still, a team aiming to stay up cannot do so without scoring goals themselves.
Germany national team veteran and current Schalke licensing director Gerald Asamoah admitted as much in his post-match comments during Friday night’s press conference. The respected German footballer lamented that his beloved club “just can’t find the ball that goes over the line”. While stressing that no one close to the Royal Blues wanted to give up, resignation was evident in his tone.
“Three clean sheets sounds good, but you still have to score up front,” remarked Asamoah, “The progress is there. We deserve it beyond words [tonight]. We just weren’t that lucky.”
By “luck” the Schalke legend undoubtedly meant the referee’s decisions in the game. Nothing went for the Gelsenkirchen hosts on Friday evening. Two goals (50th and 76th) were disallowed for offside. In the first case, the decision was extremely close and not without controversy. Schalke should have been awarded a handball penalty when WOB defender Sebastiaan Bornauw touched the ball in the penalty area in a direct duel with S04 striker Michael Frey.
Schalke coach Thomas Reis didn’t feel like using the word “luck”.
“What an absolute joke,” Reis scolded into the DAZN microphones last night, “Dortmund received a penalty in a similar game during the week in the cup [Bornauw] actively handled the ball. It’s very annoying. It’s just a frustrating situation for us because we need every point. Then there’s the offside. Why do we allow offside play to continue when the linesman has already seen it?
Reis was eventually booked because he lost his calm about the refereeing decisions towards the end of the game. At the end of the day, the S04 gaffer couldn’t contain his emotions over the VAR age rule, which tells linesmen to keep flags down, score emotionally uplifting goals from offside and then take away hard.
“I’m still angry,” Reis admitted, “and then I get the yellow card [at 90+3]. I am being penalized for the referee’s mistake. I’m sorry, but that’s just not acceptable. To get a yellow card for complaining about it. What impertinence.”
For their part, captain Maya Yoshida and keeper Fährmann only spoke about the team’s inability to score. Fährmann noted that since regaining his starting spot between the posts, the result streak has “hurt a lot”. Yoshida called for more goals but called scoring “the most difficult thing in football”.