Bundesliga club Freiburg has appealed the result of its 4-1 loss to Bayern Munich after the Bavarian powerhouse briefly had an extra player on the field, but insisted it feels “extremely uncomfortable” about doing so.
Bayern briefly had 12 players on the field
toward the end of the match when Marcel Sabitzer came on and Kingsley Coman
didn’t realize he was supposed to come off. The mixup apparently happened
because a Bayern staff member gave the fourth official Coman’s old number to
hold up during a double substitutioninstead of his current one.
Freiburg defender Nico Schlotterbeck
informed referee Christian Dingert that the visitors had a player too many,
leading to brief hold-up in play before Coman was taken off. Bayern was already
3-1 up at the time, with Coman having scored the third goal, and Sabitzer then
netted the fourth in the sixth minute of injury time.
Freiburg said the mix-up forced it into a
“dilemma through no fault of our own. SC Freiburg had no part or influence on
the events around the substitution process. Nevertheless, the legal and
procedural rules of the German soccer federation formally force us to play an
active role in order to have the processes legally checked.”
The club added that “we have no interest
whatsoever in this active role, which has been given to us against our will in
terms of procedure, and we feel extremely uncomfortable in it.”
The club said it nevertheless decided to
appeal the result after intensive discussions and legal consultations to give a
sports court the chance to evaluate the situation. It said it was important to
set a legal precedent for possible future cases for other clubs.
Earlier this season, Wolfsburg was thrown
out of the German Cup for making too many substitutions in its first-round win
over Preußen Münster.
Bayern leads the Bundesliga by nine points
with six rounds remaining.