Idman.biz
"We are used to blaming everything on the referee. But frankly, yesterday's management was really weak."
This was stated to Sportnet.az by international referee Khagani Mammadov while evaluating the refereeing of the 2026 World Cup qualifying group match between the national teams of Ukraine and Azerbaijan.
The former chairman of the AFFA Referees Committee stated that Austrian referee Sebastian Gishamer treated Ukraine with sympathy:
"Imagine that there were 2 minutes of stoppage time during the 5 minutes he added to the second half. However, after the 5 minutes were up, he didn't add even 10 seconds to the match. That is, the management was weak, even a little biased."
Mammadov also stated that the tendency towards Ukrainian teams is a policy:
"Let's remember the disallowed goal of "Qarabag" in the match against Italian "Inter" in the last round of the group stage of the Europa League in the 2024/2025 season. They appointed Czech referee Miroslav Zelinka, and what game did he produce? He dragged Ukrainian "Dnepr" from the group to the next stage, and then to the final. Now they have politicized football as well. Yesterday, Gismaher could have managed the game more correctly, but he didn't. The sympathy was on that side. However, if the referee had been objective, perhaps the result could have been different."
The former head referee noted that in the episode where the third goal of the Ukrainian national team was not counted, the VAR intervention was not due to the possibility of offside, but precisely due to a foul against the Azerbaijani football player: "Maybe there was no offside in that goal, but there was a foul. It absolutely had to be looked at, and they did look at it."
According to Mammadov, it is the right decision for Ukrainian football player Ruslan Malinovsky to receive a yellow card, not a red card, for his rough play against Azerbaijani national team captain Emin Mahmudov in the 45+1st minute:
"There was no behavior there that warranted a red card. In general, the referee did not make any mistakes that affected the final result. But during the game, decisions were made more in favor of the Ukrainians. If it was possible not to give somewhere, he gave it in their favor. Or he didn't give what he had to give in our favor. There was no problem with the goals. There was also no controversial decision that would decide the fate of the game. It's just that in some episodes, sympathy was on the side of Ukraine."
Regarding the episode in which Shahrudin Mahammadaliyev was given a yellow card, the former head referee stated that if the goalkeeper is not the captain, he cannot come and demand something from the referee:
"And on top of that, he was going after the opposing player. If the goalkeeper leaves his goal and commits some kind of sabotage, that's already a yellow card. Shahrudin could have come if he had helped the referee in suppressing the mass collision that had occurred. But you come here and say "fight-fight", you go after the opposing player, you demand something from the head referee, you heat up the situation. Gismaher immediately showed Shahrudin the right yellow card. Even if he hadn't calmed down again, he would have received a second yellow card and been sent off with a red card."
