Jens Lehmann To Bow Out With Dignity. Not.

By: Daryl | November 11th, 2008

Jens Lehmann was booked on Saturday for protesting a little too loudly during Stuttgart’s 2-2 draw with Frankfurt on Sunday. A Frankfurt player apparently feigned injury to stop a VfB counter-attack, then miraculously recovered. And this made Mad Jens a bit, well, mad:

“I told the referee, ‘Look! There he goes!’ and he shows me a yellow card – incredible. That was so bad that I may as well not bother playing in future. I did not even say anything nasty to the referee.

“Surely there are better ones. I am sorry, but things cannot go on like this. This is sad for the whole of the Bundesliga.”

I’m not sure how serious Lehmann’s threat to quit playing is. But I do know he’s already been booked three times for dissent this season in the Bundesliga. Good old Jens. The Premier League must be glad that he’s gone home, because the Respect for Referees campaign is in enough trouble already.

Retirement beckons at the end of this season for Lehmann, and it’s strangely reassuring to see the crazy keeper following Dylan Thomas’ advice and not going gentle into that good night, but continuing to act like a maniac right til the end instad. Not sure that’s exactly what Thomas meant, but good stuff nonetheless.

I’d be interested to hear what Bundesliga fans think: Is there a problem with referees in the Bundesliga? Or is the problem quite literally in Jens Lehmann’s head?

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RedLine55

time for a career in MLS!
yaph

Lehmann loves to complain about referees. I don't think that Bundesliga referees are special in a positive or negative meaning.
free beet

hes just tired of playing football m8
Jan

"Is there a problem with referees in the Bundesliga? Or is the problem quite literally in Jens Lehmann’s head?"

You can't ask an either/or question with one answer being "in Jens Lehmann's head", because then the answer is always "in Jens Lehmann's head". :-)

Though, Lehmann wasn't the only one bitching and getting a yellow card or even red card this weekend. There was a sudden outburst of ref-slamming this weekend. That one third of the season is already over, until the first real outburst is a good sign that the overall quality of the refereeing this season isn't that bad though.

IMHO there are two problems: one is the fact, that German refs hate extra time. It's not uncommon, that the ref blows the whistle after exactly 90 minutes or gives a maximum of one or two minutes extra time. I remember a very closely contested match between Schalke and Bremen, with the action going back and forth with both sides coming close to scoring. The ref blew the whistle after exactly 90 minutes and the match ended 0-0. A draw was just the right result for this match, but it's not up to the ref to make that decision. Because there was enough happening during the match that would have warranted 3-4 minutes of extra time, and the way the match was going, there was a very real possibility that one side would be able to deal a cruel sucker punch. I've seen quite a few players lamenting the lack of extra time this season and it would be something easy to fix.

The other problem is over-protection of the refs in case of refereeing mistakes. E.g. I have noticed that a few red cards have successfully been appealed in the Premier League this season. I can't remember the last time this happened in the Bundesliga. I can understand, that the FA tries to protect the authority of the refs, but sometimes they indirectly protect dirty players this way. And I feel this needs rebalancing. After all, dirty players successfully conning the ref, is a worse act of undermining the authority of a referee, than overthrowing a bad decision.
diana

To admit now Daryl, I initially thought you are talking about Lehmann being denied the chance to play against England next week in a friendly. :) There were once talk that he would end his international career with the England friendly (even he himself once said that he like the idea of playing against England, given of his years at Arsenal). There are more details at the Stuttgart Offside.

Forget to add about Pizarro's case. He did the criticising after the match.
diana

Daryl, Mad Jens is not the only one. There has been a handful of cases just in the weekend alone in the Bundesliga.

Werder Bremen's Claudio Pizarro is another example. He was criticising the referee who was in charge of the Bochum-Werder Bremen match on TV and got fined. A fine of €3,000. Borussia Dortmund coach Juergen Klopp actually ran on to the pitch at full-time to confront the referee in charge of the Hamburg-Dortmund match and he had been asked by the German FA to explain his actions.

Anyhow, it has gotten the Kaiser himself, Franz Beckbenbauer fearing for the referees in Germany - http://www.sportinglife.com/fo...
Marlon

Wow. A Dylan Thomas reference. Daryl is dropping literary knowledge on us.
Laurie

Any time I see "Jens Lehmann" in a headline, I know the story will entertain me.

I love Mad Jens. I will miss him when he's gone.