Unofficial FC Bayern Forum

I would like to highlight the events circulating around Ribery's suspension from the Champions League final as they seem suspicious.

The background
Bayern have been the victims of several incorrect refereeing decisions this season. To name a few that spring to mind:
1) Bordeaux saving the ball on the line from a Klose shot, clearly using the hand.
2) Harsh/incorrect decisions in the red cards and penalties against Bayern in the other Bordeaux match
3) Camoranesi not sent off for repeated fouling, esp. on Ribery. The Italian commentator on the Italian state TV RAI claimed that he could not believe how Camoranesi had not yet been sent off, and this was prior to further fouls from the same player.
4) The Fiorentina encounter. Everybody says that Bayern didn't deserve to go through as Klose was offside. It's true that Klose was offside in the 1st leg, but so was Gilardino in the 2nd leg just before he assisted to Jovetic. Also, the same Klose was metres onside when receiving a ball that allowed him to go through 1 on 1 against Frey in a very favourable position.

The nationality of the referee
I strongly believe that if there was to be a survey around all European countries to see whether people preferred Lyon or Bayern to go through to the final, the country with the highest percentage rooting for Lyon would have been Italy. More than France, since fans of rival teams to Lyon might have voted for Bayern. But in Italy, the situation was different, for 2 reasons:
1) People who wanted Inter to win the Champions League would have preferred Bayern to Lyon, because on paper Bayern are stronger opponents. This reasoning was confirmed by Inter players and Inter's manager Mourinho himself.
2) Other fans who might not have wanted Inter to win as much might have still wanted Lyon due to the UEFA Coefficients, which basically the Bayern win puts the Serie A in a chance of losing one Champions League spot starting from the 2011/2012 season.

How could UEFA have possibly chosen an Italian referee?

Despite giving the red card, Rosetti's report said that Ribery was sent off for serious foul play, meaning an automatic 1 match suspension.

Did he deserve a red card?
By the book, yes. But usually things don't go exactly by the book. Recently we've seen:
1) The foul on Ballack which ruled him out of the World Cup. This was punished with a yellow card.

2) The foul by Frings on Schweinsteiger during the German Cup final. Frings was likewise not sent off.

3) A very similar foul in the match between Bosnia and Portugal. The referee for this match was the very same Rosetti. Check out from 1:19 onwards:

4) A very good definition of an assault by Totti on Inter's Balotelli in the same game in which he made another brutal foul. Totti was sent off for the challenge but only received a 4 match suspension:



The UEFA board
There are several Italians occupying important places in the UEFA, and not even one German, and this was mildly placed by Hoeness claiming that there was no "moral support". Their decision was to upturn Rosetti's opinion of serious foul play into assault, which by their definition can only happen off the ball. Basically they made no distinction between the ball being where it was or it being 40m away from the challenge. How someone can be running with the ball and in the same STEP make a foul off the ball strikes me.

The board of appeals
These had their hands tied, going against the decision of fellow UEFA employees. To note that even here some of the people making the decision to uphold the ban were Italian.

CAS
Bayern took the case over to CAS, but CAS surprising refused to get into it, claiming they could not decide what constituted as being assault and what was serious foul play. Were their hands tied too? Hard to say, but what is known is that the president of CAS is an Italian hailing from Milan, so a political decision can definitely not be excluded.

What is your opinion, were we robbed or not?

i voted for probably not

the UEFA did that so that they dont make their ref look bad , same goes to the CAS

especially that Motta also was A Victim of Busquests and he is still banned
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What i hated is the fact that the president of the CAS is from Milan,Italy if i am not mistaken

Ribery foul looks Exactly the same as Kevin prince boateng, but with less power so both should have recieved the same punishment which is the Yellow card

So even though The RED Card was BS , This is not the First time The UEFA favors the ref to keep the trust in Referees
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we also got help form the referees to be honest , Klose's goal for example


picking an italian referee was a mistake , but bayern could have appealed against it (it happened in WC2006 )
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so it all might be a series of mistakes

but this is not the first time this happened

Element wrote:the UEFA did that so that they dont make their ref look bad , same goes to the CAS

The referee marked it down as serious foul play. It was UEFA's own decision to hand Ribery the 3 match suspension rather than 1. It is very important for your opinion that the reason why it happened was to protect the referee. They actually went out of their way and made the referee look bad by overriding his definition of the challenge.

Element wrote:especially that Motta also was A Victim of Busquests and he is still banned

Motta was foolish. He held his arm high enough to hit the face of a taller player. He didn't deserve a straight red for that, but a yellow card would have sent him off and suspended him for the final anyway.

Element wrote:==============
What i hated is the fact that the president of the CAS is from Milan,Italy if i am not mistaken

Ribery foul looks Exactly the same as Kevin prince boateng, but with less power so both should have recieved the same punishment which is the Yellow card

So even though The RED Card was BS , This is not the First time The UEFA favors the ref to keep the trust in Referees
===================
we also got help form the referees to be honest , Klose's goal for example

I have already mentioned all of these above

Element wrote:picking an italian referee was a mistake , but bayern could have appealed against it (it happened in WC2006 )

When you appeal for something small like this, people will start having grudges against you. Usually you'd want to appeal only when you feel very strongly about something.

I voted i dont know, because i have no idea, but everything its posible in this live.

I voted for I don't know, but I think it's more likely that yes, there is some kind of conspiracy. Everything that's happened seems to concern either the French (Platini) or Italians.

I think it's probably not.
Conspiracy theories can be made on so many places and I think German teams have been pretty luck this year already.

Had Bordeaux not beaten Juven on Matchday 5 in group stage we would've been in europa League. We didn't even have it in our own hands then. HSV has also been ultra lucky with referee decisions to make it to the Semis.
I think there are some decision influenced like the referee always being against Chelsea (2008 Final, 2009 Semi and this year vs Inter a BIT as well), but I don't think the big guys at UEFA would risk years in prison just to see their favorite teams win.

it was an italian referee was it

theturtle wrote:it was an italian referee was it

Yes

I can't believe this was actually a subject at one point! Incompetence =/= corruption, simple as that.

Bayern board has a conspiracy against winning the CL (we wont win it this year for sure with the lack of transfers in the back line).