Mina defender Dmytro Nemchaninov talks about the arbitrariness of referee Mykola Balakin, who disallowed a clean goal by the Transcarpathians in the match against Shakhtar.
Dmitry Nemchaninov- After a cross from the flank, you shot into the box, the ball hit the crossbar and then popped into the field. If our eyesight is correct, was it definitely a goal?
- Absolutely. But the referee Balakin did not make an obvious decision, and I think I saw our bonus money flying off the crossbar.
After the game, Shakhtar admitted that there was a goal. But when we went to the break immediately after the disallowed goal, Donetsk assured us that there was no goal.
The opposing coach Jovicevic also said that Traore was knocked down before my "goal", and this influenced the episode. I don't think that a violation in the center of the field and a goal are equivalent episodes.
- It seems that Nikolay Balakin is already familiar to you from other games?
- I have already encountered his strange decisions. In 2019, in the final round of the championship, he played for Desna in Odesa against Chornomorets. "The Mariners needed a win to avoid relegation. "This miracle referee gave a penalty and sent me off in an episode when the Odesa team had committed a foul on me. This is the kind of football and this is Balakin.
On the eve of the game, I saw a post on a social network that collected information about strange refereeing decisions in the previous round - both in the UPL and the First League. It's the end of the championship again, and once again, something that doesn't surprise anyone is happening, and which, unfortunately, is a classic of our football. It's a mess both in the UPL and below.
And this is not just my opinion or the opinion of the Minaj club. As long as this goes on in refereeing, nothing in our football will improve.
- Could the VAR system help in such situations?
- I believe that VAR should be at every UPL match. I know that these VAR machines are expensive. But the problem must be solved somehow, right? Install at least automatic goal scoring systems at matches, they are hardly expensive. I have long noticed that VAR is sometimes present and sometimes absent at matches when there is some additional, non-sportsmanlike logic behind it. As if someone can influence it outside the regulations and approved rules.
- Would you have kept the match tied?
- I scored what is called the "ball in the locker room," which is an important factor. But I will not say that the match would have necessarily ended with a 1-1 score. There was still the second half left, Shakhtar is a fairly strong team, they could have scored a few goals after the break.
The media reported that the referee's observer Serhiy Zadiran expressed his uncertainty that the ball had fully crossed the goal line. I don't know, maybe it's an old man. (Zadiran is 61 years old - ed.)who has less than perfect eyesight. And it is possible that one of the assistant referees of the match is also not doing well with his eyes. For example, after Trubochkin's discount on Bandura, we were given a corner kick, after which even Shakhtar players were smiling.
Unfortunately, this is not the first glaring episode of the season. In the match against Oleksandriya, we scored from a clear offside. And even earlier, in the second round, the game against Lviv was refereed by Oleksandr Derdo. His assistant did not notice the two-meter offside position. Interestingly, the day before, his father Viktor Hryhorovych, the former chairman of the referees' committees, came to us and told us about the football rules. But what good are stories when there are too obvious violations?
Anton Terekhov.
