Felix Zwayer: Why England's Jude Bellingham has history with referee taking charge of Euro 2024 semi-final
The German referee Felix Zwayer will be officiating the Euro 2024 semi-final match between England and the Netherlands on Wednesday. Zwayer has a past connection with Jude Bellingham.
The person from Berlin who is 43 years old will be in charge of a group of German referees in Dortmund. This will be the second occasion that Zwayer has supervised a game with the Dutch team, as he also officiated their win against Romania in the last-16 round.
Prior to that, Zwayer officiated the first game for Italy against Albania and the second group match for Portugal against Turkey.
On Wednesday night, the German player will be on the field with the Three Lions midfielder Bellingham, and they have a past together.
In December 2021, Bellingham was fined €40,000 (equivalent to £33,970) by the German FA for his remarks about Zwayer after Borussia Dortmund's 3-2 defeat to Bayern Munich.
Bellingham criticized Zwayer's decisions on the field after he refused to give a penalty, but then ended up awarding one to Bayern for a handball by Mats Hummels.
The German Football Association's sports tribunal deemed Bellingham's comment as "unsportsmanlike behavior".
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Following the match, Bellingham spoke to ViaPlay and expressed his frustration, stating that having a referee who has been involved in match-fixing in the past officiate the most important game in Germany was bound to lead to controversy.
In my opinion, it was not a penalty. Hummels wasn't even watching the ball, he was just trying to get to it and it ended up hitting him. There were a lot of questionable decisions made throughout the game.
The English player Bellingham mentioned Zwayer's suspension from the German FA for six months in 2005 because of his participation in a scandal involving fixing matches.
Zwayer confessed to receiving money from Robert Hoyzer, another referee who had been banned for his suspected involvement in fixing matches, four years before he was promoted to the Bundesliga.
Explaining his choices after Bellingham's remarks, Zwayer - who later took a two-month hiatus from refereeing - told Sky Germany: "The incident involved a normal corner kick."
In the game, I noticed there was a situation involving a touch by Hummels. The question that came to my mind was: Was his arm extended away from his body or not? It was difficult to see in real-time whether his arm was intentionally moved towards the ball.
I consulted with the VAR officials in Cologne and then they looked at the arm position.
The video assistant reviewed the play and determined that Hummels had his arm positioned unnaturally, away from his body.
Ultimately, he intentionally blocked the ball with his elbow, which led me to conclude that a penalty was deserved.
