Violet VAR Anger: "Hard to Accept"

"Don't Look at the Table Too Early"

Reinhold Ranftl dismisses it: "You shouldn't look at the table too early. But of course, zero points are not enough for our aspirations."

In contrast to the very weak performance in Wolfsberg, Austria delivered a rather appealing performance against the defending champions this time.

"If the game had gone a bit more our way, it could have looked very different. I don't think LASK was two goals better today," says Johannes Handl.

His coach, Stephan Helm, agrees: "It would have been possible to get more out of it."

A Razor-Thin VAR Decision

Indeed, FAK celebrated a header goal by Ibrahim Buhari in the twelfth minute. But not for long; after a three-minute review, the VAR determined that assist-provider Taeseok Lee was allegedly offside.

The calibrated line shown at halftime on "Sky" could neither clearly confirm nor refute this finding – a millimeter decision.

"Mir kann hundertmal jemand erzählen, dass das kalibriert ist, ich glaube nicht, dass die Technik in so einem Moment alles abdeckt."

Stephan Helm

And that's exactly what annoys the Austrians. Handl: "You just get impatient when it's reviewed for five minutes and then an offside call is made. If it takes that long, then you probably can't really see it clearly anyway."

Are the TV Images Good Enough?

Ranftl also doubts: "I don't know if we have such good images in Austria to see that. It's annoying, but we have to accept it."

"It's hard to accept this line. I doubt this decision. Someone can tell me a hundred times that it's calibrated, but I don't believe that the technology covers everything in such a moment. There's a human sitting there placing the points," an angry Coach Helm stated.

Helm's Bottle Throw

The violet coach received a yellow card shortly after for throwing a bottle onto the pitch in anger over an uncalled foul.

In this regard, the Burgenländer admits his fault: "The foul happened one and a half meters in front of me. I happened to have the bottle in my hand. I shouldn't have done that; I have to be self-critical. I also told the referee that it wasn't okay; the bottle flew three meters into the air. It was in the heat of the moment. It was a mistake. Everyone knows that I'm usually an easy-going person on the sidelines."

No Further Discussions

There were no discussions, however, regarding Austria's second disallowed goal, when the ball went into the net off Kelvin Boateng's hand after LASK defender Joao Tornich had shot it at him.

And there could also be no two opinions about the red card against Aleksandar Dragovic, who parried a shot with his hand just before the goal.

Goalkeeper Samuel Sahin-Radlinger initially saved the resulting penalty, but Moses Usor then did better on the rebound.