Referee Schlager explains decision to award Bülter’s goal in Köln’s draw with Union Berlin

Marius Bülter scored his first goal since the turn of the year in Köln’s 2-2 draw with his maiden Bundesliga club, Union Berlin. Although it was a beautiful strike from the 33-year-old, the goal could’ve easily been disallowed after a VAR check.

Said El Mala first rushed to get to Kristoffer Lund’s pass from an offside position before Jakub Kaminski intervened. Eventually, Bülter scored the goal with the assist coming from the other winger, Luca Waldschmidt.

“To disallow the goal for an offside, one of three criteria must be met,” the match referee Daniel Schlager started his explanation in a post-match interview with Sky. “The first one is that if he (El Mala) directly plays the ball. He isn’t.

“If he was involved in a challenge for the ball with an opponent, that’ll also be a criterion. But it wasn’t the case here either, since the opponent is far away. The last one is that if he influences the opponent in the challenge for the ball. And he didn’t do that either, because the ball is simply far away from the nearest defender,” explained the 36-year-old.

The other aspect of the goal that was raised after the game was that the assistant referee waved his flag, although Schlager didn’t whistle to stop the action. Although play should also continue in that case, that did bring confusion in Union Berlin’s defense. Since the emergence of VAR, it’s standard practice for assistant referees to wait until the end of action before intervening.

“This is certainly an issue we’re looking into. The flag came up a bit too early at that moment,” admitted Schlager. “It’s always difficult for the assistant to see from a long distance who is actually going for the ball.

“He was certain that El Mala would get it, and he didn’t see the other player (Kaminski), who then made contact with the ball. I had him on my radar, so I told him, ‘That’s not an offside position for me.’ Then he lowered his flag, and that’s how the goal was able to happen.”

Eventually, Union Berlin managed to crawl back for a point after conceding a second goal at the hour mark.