He blames referee Kateryna Monzul for not treating it as a handball, while video referees Paolo Valeri and Pol van Bockel came to the joint conclusion that it was not a penalized move, “So they didn’t even check the scene. !” Bild reports. The tabloid confronted Monzul about her decision after the match, asking: “What happened in the 25th minute to England’s handball?” Monzul, he said, “shrugged her shoulders and held out her hands in an apologetic manner and left. No explanation.” The tabloid then proceeded to tackle Valerie after the match ended in the mixed zone. His response, he said, was: “Non posso dire niente, mi dispiace” – or “I can’t say anything, I’m sorry”. Bild translates it more bluntly in German as: “Sorry, I was silenced.” Later, in a widely reported media interview, Germany coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg was also critical of the decision: “At this level in a European Championship final something like this shouldn’t happen,” she said. “I would like to have a discussion about this. But what I don’t want is for it to be ignored.” In a separate commentary, Bild goes so far as to compare what it calls the “fraudulent” result to Germany’s men’s defeat at Wembley by England in the 1966 World Cup: “Germany is crying with our players and is upset about this new Wembley Scam! With this 1-2 extra-time defeat, we were cheated again almost 56 years after the Wembley goal scandal,” he writes. Spiegel referred to the “uproar over a handball” which it said might have turned the game in Germany’s favour. He reported that Voss-Tecklenburg politely said that while Germany should have been awarded a penalty, in her opinion, England were deserved winners after the 120-minute match. “They played themselves into a lot of people’s hearts,” he said. Die Zeit said it was clear the match “could have ended differently if the referee had recognized Leah Williamson’s handball in the 25th minute. According to the Regulation it should have led to a penalty, maybe even a red card. But neither the referee, who is probably shocked anyway, nor the video assistants wanted to admit that they had seen anything. Which led to quite a bit of discussion afterwards.” Meanwhile, Germany are surprisingly already looking to next year’s World Cup to get their revenge.
