The Bundesliga league leaders were up against 5th place Freiburg on the 28th Match Day of the season in the new Euro-Park Stadion.
It was an important fixture for Bayern as their rivals, Borussia Dortmund, who were in 2nd place in the league had a difficult match against RB Leipzig.
A win for Bayern and a loss for their rivals Dortmund would put an end to the title race in the Bundesliga as 9 points is a huge lead for a club like Bayern to overthrow, and they got what they wanted
Julian Nagelsmann’s side thrashed SC Freiburg 4-1 with goals coming from Leon Goretzka, Serge Gnabry, Kingsley Coman and Marcel Sabitzer.
In a lot of ways, it was a routine outing for the Bavarians, but all could now be undone easily due to confusion between the players in the 85th minute of the game.
German media outlet BILD called it ‘Bavaria’s stupidity‘. So what exactly happened?
In the 84th minute, Julian Nagelsmann asked to take off Kingsley Coman and Corentin Tolisso to replace them with Marcel Sabitzer and Niklas Sule, but only one of them left the field.
Bayern Munich had 12 players on the field. The game progressed for 17 seconds until the VAR referees finally took note and stopped the game for 6 minutes, trying to figure out what happened and what was the cause of this mishap.
Bayern Munich played with 12 players for 17 seconds after a substitution mix. pic.twitter.com/kZ9070HhIj
— BRGoals (@BRGoals) April 2, 2022
In the picture above, it is observable that Bayern has 11 players itself just in the outfield and with Neuer at the back, the total number of Bayern players on the field becomes 12. Along with Freiburg players, the number reaches 23 players on the pitch, which is a tad too many and also, illegal.
“As (Corentin Tolisso) went off because he had stomach problems but then the fourth official didn’t quite know what was going on. Then the wrong number was shown and Kingsley (Coman) didn’t know that he had to go off,” said Nagelsmann in the post-match press conference.
The 34-year old coach also claimed that what happened, “wasn’t a game-changing scene so that the fairness is called into question…I don’t think Coman even touch the ball but just before he wanted to touch it, the game was stopped”.
It remains to be seen if Bayern will receive a points deduction for this, although that looks quite likely, according to MARCA.
Borussia Dortmund will be paying close attention to this situation as they could take advantage of this situation to turn the tide in the league.
