Oleg OREHOV: “The decision on Pedro Enrique’s red card was prompted by VAR”

FIFA ex-referee Oleg Orekhov commented for Sport.ua on two episodes that happened in the second half of the Champions League match in Eindhoven, where PSV hosted Shakhtar Donetsk (3:2) yesterday. According to many experts, at first the Swiss referee Urs Schneider did not punish the PSV player for a rough game against the miner Sikan, and then he did not react to the violation of the rules by the Brazilian legionnaire of the Ukrainian team Pedro Enrique, giving him a verdict in the form of a red card only later.

– In the episode at the 49th minute, there was a duel, during which PSV player Tillman hit Sikan in the knee with a sliding kick, – says Orekhov. – Yes, the blow was painful, but there was no risk of a fracture or any other serious injury. Therefore, in this case, this violation “pulled” a yellow card.

– And what about the second episode, which happened in the 67th minute of the match and led to the withdrawal of the Brazilian legionnaire “Shakhtar” Pedro Enrique?

– In it, the Brazilian stepped on Bakayoko’s achilles with a push. As I understand it, nowadays the referees punish with magic cards when there is a hard attack by the opponent. That is, when there is a risk of causing a serious injury to the opponent, which will be associated with a fracture, crack or torn ligament, etc.

– After Bakayoko, having received a blow from a player of the Donetsk team, was lying on the lawn, the Swiss referee did not react to the violation in any way. The game continued for another 24 seconds until he finally blew the whistle. How do you rate his actions?

– As I understand it, the referee did not see this violation and therefore was not even going to withdraw for this episode. Punishment in the form of a red card was determined by VAR, which gave a recommendation to Schneider after the review. With such disciplinary sanctions, representatives of the FIFA refereeing corps show that they are struggling with this and that in the future football players think about how to act in this or that situation. As for the fact that the referee reacted to the violation only after a signal from the VAR assistant, here I would like to give an example of a similar complexity for refereeing. So imagine that there is an attack, we score the ball. And what – does the referee need to cancel the taking of the goal? This would then be considered a double fault. In this case, the referee should stop the attack, which did not lead to the desired result of the attacking team. Because she broke the rules. So in the case of Pedro Enrique, Schneider didn’t see the foul, thinking he had played the ball and continuing the game. And stopped it in fact, after receiving a signal from VAR colleagues. And even then a disciplinary sanction was issued.