Germany's coach Christian Wueck lambasted American referee Jair Marrufo’s “poor supervision” after his team lost the quarterfinal 1-2 to Brazil in the FIFA Under-17 World Cup.
“I am sure you watched the game and did see what happened to the eyes of Jan Boller? He was hit by a Brazil player and no one was penalised for that. We have no problems in losing but not in this unfair manner. The difference was the referee in this match,” said Wueck.
Wueck introduced defender Jan Boller in place of midfielder Sahverdi Cetin in the 76th minute apparently looking to strengthen the backline. The German coach was referring an incident, wherein Boller was hit on his face while trying to tackle a Brazilian player. A minute after this, Brazilian attacker Paulinho found the winner with a perfect pile-driver.
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Reflecting on how Brazil turned things around, Wueck said that the opponents had a better second half but his boys should have got another goal after the break. “We were better in the first half and Brazil did well after the break. But I have to say, we should have scored in the second half and lost because of that,” he said.
Germany took the lead in the first half thanks to a penalty awarded by Marrufo after Brazilian defender Lucas Halter fouled German full-back John Yeboah.
Ghana coach Samuel Fabin made protested against Algerian referee Mehdi Abid Charef for disallowing a legitimate goal and when his team was trailing against Mali in the quarterfinal at Guwahati.
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The reaction of the defeated coaches was blown away by the FIFA’s head of refereeing Massimo Busacca, who said they were trying to cover up their mistakes by blaming the referee.
“I know what happened yesterday in the game because we watch the video after every match. Honestly, it is not my habit to find excuse in life. If we commit mistake, admit it. But probably it is not the case for everybody,” Busacca said on Monday. “I think there was no blatant case of referring oversight yesterday and so we do not want to lose much time on that.”
When the Brazilian coach Carlos Amadeu was asked to comment on Wueck’s complaint, he said: “We have won fair-play awards in Under-15 and Under-17 championships in the past. We had only one yellow card going into this match. To me, my role is to see how my players are playing without thinking about what the referee is doing. I am really happy how we played both physically and mentally.”
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