FC Bayern missed out on the Champions League final—was the referee partly to blame? Vincent Kompany didn’t want to say too much about his decisions, but the Munich club’s management certainly did.
Referee Joao Pinheiro sparked protests several times at the Allianz Arena—both in the stands and on the bench. As Munich was eliminated, the Portuguese official took a lenient approach, just as he had done in late January during Bayern’s away win in Eindhoven; however, the key moments around the 30th minute in particular provided plenty of talking points.
On the one hand, there was Joao Neves’s handball in his own penalty area. The Portuguese player had the ball hit his outstretched arm after a clearance attempt by his teammate Vitinha, but no penalty was called. “That’s a bit of nonsense, that’s rubbish,” FCB coach Kompany commented on the play during the DAZN broadcast, addressing the interpretation of the rule.
If a player is struck on the hand or arm by a teammate’s shot or header, it is generally not considered a handball—provided it was an attempt to clear the ball. That was the case with Joao Neves, so the decision was correct. The midfielder had nevertheless spread his arm out. “That’s where it gets weird for me. What is the rule now? No one can explain that to me. From my perspective, it’s a handball in the penalty area,” added sporting director Max Eberl in the mixed zone.
Laimer found Pinheiro’s decision “strange”
Much more controversial, however, was another incident a few minutes before the handball in the Paris penalty area. In the 29th minute, the focus was again on a handball—in this case, an alleged one by Konrad Laimer and a clear one by Nuno Mendes. Referee Pinheiro had awarded a free kick to Paris following Laimer’s dribble and Mendes’ subsequent handball, claiming to have seen a handball by the Austrian on first contact—a wrong call. For Nuno Mendes, who had already been shown a yellow card, the game would have been over because his action would have interrupted an attack.
While Kompany surprisingly sidestepped this situation, Laimer was clear: “I touch him on the body, trying to play the ball past him, and he clearly knocks it away with his hand. That’s probably a clear yellow card. These are decisions that didn’t go our way. The referee called my handball five seconds later—that seemed odd to me during the game.”
Eberl, for his part, described it as a “maybe” situation. “Honestly, I didn’t see Konni’s handball; the other one was relatively clear.” Kompany and Laimer, in particular, agreed on one thing: they spoke of “game-deciding” situations that went against them on Wednesday night against FC Bayern.
Kompany questions length of stoppage time – Dreesen clear
Referee Pinheiro didn’t fare well in other aspects either – for instance, Kompany and apparently Joshua Kimmich were unhappy with the interpretation of stoppage time. While the latter, furious, had rushed over to the referee immediately after the final whistle and received a yellow card, Kompany analyzed a possible reason for Kimmich’s displeasure. “If two, three, four players are lying on the ground unnecessarily, you haven’t played the full five minutes. If you observe that correctly—and then suddenly it’s over.”
The Belgian, too, had approached Pinheiro once more to speak with him. In his DAZN interview, however, Kompany in particular did not give the impression at all that he wanted to shift the blame onto the referee. Rather, the Bayern coach spoke in his usual calm and matter-of-fact manner, and also expressed his respect for PSG.
Munich’s CEO Jan-Christian Dreesen, on the other hand, had something else to say about the referee: “It’s astonishing, to say the least, that a referee with only 15 Champions League appearances is allowed to officiate such a match. And that might explain some of the calls,” Dreesen said, voicing his displeasure with Pinheiro, who was nominated by FIFA for the World Cup this summer.
Despite the bitter elimination and the justified criticism of individual refereeing decisions, FC Bayern will have to admit that, in the end, Joao Pinheiro was not solely responsible for their exit from the Champions League. But no one else was either, as Manuel Neuer, among others, has said.
