Julian Nagelsmann has slammed Freiburg for appealing to the German Football Association (DFB) after a substitution mix up saw Bundesliga leaders Bayern Munich briefly field 12 players last Saturday.
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Bayern won 4-1 at Freiburg, but the host club has appealed after Bayern had an extra player on the pitch for 18 seconds of the second half after two players came on, but only one had come off.
“From a personal point of view, I can’t understand why Freiburg is doing it,” Bayern coach Nagelsmann said Tuesday, the day after Freiburg appealed to the DFB.
“Because I don’t think they would have scored two goals in the 18 seconds.
“I personally wouldn’t have done it because I think that you take advantage of a mistake made by a third party to maybe score points yourself.”
Bayern CEO Oliver Kahn has said the club’s senior figures “fully trust” the German FA, implying the result should stand.
Bayern holds a nine-point lead at the top of the Bundesliga table and is on course for a tenth straight German league title.
The German FA could reverse Saturday’s result, awarding the three points to Freiburg and Nagelsmann is agitated by their appeal.
“I’m not quite as relaxed as the CEO, to be honest,” Nagelsmann fumed.
The 34-year-old Bayern coach is adamant the DFB’s judgement “can only go in one direction” and let the result stand.
In a long statement issued on Monday, Freiburg stressed that the club “played no part in and had no influence over the events surrounding the substitution process”.
There is no precedent for a team ever having had 12 players on the pitch during a Bundesliga match.
Freiburg says they are appealing to the DFB in order to “protect the rights of other clubs who suffer comparable situations in the future”.
With six games left, Freiburg is fifth in the Bundesliga table, three points away from a top-four place which would see them qualify for the Champions League for the first time.
Each of the 32 clubs who qualified for the group stages of the Champions League this season earned 15.6 million euros ($17.2 million).
Yet Nagelsmann specifically attacked Freiburg over the issue of the three points which could decide Champions League qualification and earn the club from Germany’s Black Forest millions of euros next season.
“I don’t know if you can pat yourself on the back if you should play internationally (in the Champions League) because of the three points you won, which you simply didn’t win in sporting terms,” Nagelsmann added.
“I wouldn’t be so happy if that were the case.”
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