UEFA won’t punish Bayern Munich’s Michael Olise, Joshua Kimmich for yellow cards
· Yahoo Sports
It was almost a perfect night for Bayern Munich in Bergamo as they came away with a 6-1 win over Atalanta in the first leg of the Champions League Round of 16, taking a hefty aggregate lead back to Munich for the return leg. From the 13 shots on target they registered against the Serie A side, it could’ve been even more than 6 goals from the German Rekordmeister, but it’s quite difficult to complain about such a comprehensive victory away from home.
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Perhaps the only negatives from the match from a Bayern point of view other than conceding the late goal to give up the clean sheet and the injury concerns for Alphonso Davies, Jonas Urbig, and Jamal Musiala were the yellow cards brandished for Joshua Kimmich and Michael Olise. The pair of players will now miss the return leg at the Allianz Arena due to yellow card accumulation suspensions and there was speculation that both players’ cards were given for slightly nefarious-looking time wasting antics.
For Olise’s yellow in the 77th minute, he was deemed to have taken a bit too long to have taken a corner kick and for Kimmich’s card in the 83rd minute, he was deemed to have taken far too long to take a free kick in his own half near the center circle, so much so to the point that Atalanta’s Yunus Musah rushed the ball and kicked it away out of frustration. With that being the case, there was a fear that some would have seen Olise and Kimmich getting booked as intentional, knowing they would get rests for the return leg.
“As soon as incidents are reported, proceedings will be initiated. Should these lead to disciplinary action, it will be published on the UEFA disciplinary website,” UEFA told the Deutschen Presse-Agentur less than 24 hours after the match (via @iMiaSanMia).
In addition to the statement from UEFA, referee Espen Eskås, who officiated the match between Atalanta and Bayern, did not note anything suspicious or any foul behavior from either Kimmich or Olise in his official match report. As such, there is no concrete evidence or proof that either player intentionally received a yellow card by time wasting and UEFA’s disciplinary committee will not take any action on the matter, as per French outlet L’Equipe (via @iMiaSanMia).