The defeat suffered against Liverpool due to the penalty awarded in the final minutes continues to leave aftereffects in the Nerazzurri camp. As written this morning by La Gazzetta dello Sport, Inter remains stunned by the decision that influenced the Champions League match at San Siro, with the day after only intensifying anger and controversy. The refereeing of the German Felix Zwayer fuels discussions, but the role of VAR Soren Storks is also under scrutiny.
A clear position emerges from Nyon: the VAR should have avoided intervening on the contact between Bastoni and Wirtz, leaving the evaluation to the referee. President Beppe Marotta and the Nerazzurri directors expressed polite complaints to Zwayer in the bowels of the Milan stadium, reproaching him for his lack of personality in managing the episode without being influenced. For UEFA, the error is attributed precisely to Storks, who interfered in a matter that did not concern him. Once called to the monitor, for the referee, awarding the penalty after seeing the shirt stretch by about thirty centimeters became almost automatic.
The astonishment in the Inter camp grew in the afternoon, when Marotta and Ausilio delved deeper into the dossier on Zwayer. An incident dating back over twenty years resurfaced: the German referee, then a young linesman, was suspended for six months by the German federation for a story related to match-fixing. The forty-four-year-old real estate agent from Berlin received three hundred euros from Robert Hoyzer, a referee later banned for life, during a regional league match between Wuppertaler and Werder Bremen 2 in May 2004, without immediately reporting the incident.
Zwayer later turned himself in, helping to incriminate the colleague at the center of the investigation and thus avoiding a lifetime ban. The truth emerged some time later, when the sealed transcript of the proceedings reached the media. Despite this past, the German has managed to build a career considered irreproachable from an ethical standpoint, to the point of being recruited by UEFA to officiate high-level matches. He remains, however, a divisive figure: in 2016 Rudi Voeller contested his officiating in Bayer Leverkusen-Borussia Dortmund, while in 2021 Jude Bellingham openly criticized him, bringing up the conviction for match-fixing.
Storks also has controversial precedents: he was at VAR in Porto-Roma last February, a match that infuriated Claudio Ranieri, and in the Champions League playoff between Juventus and PSV, when the Bianconeri complained about a penalty not awarded.
