Joren Dom looks back in anger to that eventful Sunday afternoon. An eager Beerschot was leading KV Mechelen 1-0 until the 90th minute. But in added time it all went wrong. “Those last minutes and the officials’ mistake made the difference between positions 5 and 10 in the table. So very frustrating. But I’d like to remember the positive stuff.”
Beerschot looked on its way to a nice and satisfying victory against a strong opponent. After that disappointing and poor performance in the cup tie on Thursday night, Our Mannekes now found their stride and looked driven to get a result. Until the last minute it looked rosy and as if our players’ character would get rewarded. But in the 91st and 94th minute we conceded two goals.
“Maybe we weren’t at our best but at least we played with the right attitude. Those two late goals were a big blow for everyone of us”, says Joren Dom. “Okay, we must try to avoid losing the ball in midfield because in the end they proved very costly mistakes. There is absolutely no need to point fingers to individual players’ mistakes. You win and lose as a team. Our spirit was good. We even created a good scoring opportunity a minute after we conceded that equaliser. But that second goal, KV Mechelen’s winner, was ridiculous though.”
Without any doubt eveyone in Belgium has by now seen the footage of the incident. And spotted that Schoofs was in a clear offside position. Neither the referee, nor the linesman reacted. And also VAR didn’t see the need to interfere. “Incredible. We played the offside trap perfectly and were sure play would be halted because of Schoofs’ offside position. Even the players of KV Mechelen told each other they were sure the goal wouldn’t stand. The official VAR reaction that they didn’t have the right angle and/or footage to make a decision is simply ridiculous. The footage from our club camera however was crystal clear: at least a metre offside! The VAR system of the Premier League can draw the offside line down to the miilimetre, but apparently that is not possible in Belgium. I really don’t understand that.”
As a consequence Beerschot dropped to position 10 in the table instead of climbing up to 5th. Joren Dom evaluates realistically: ‘Look, when you lose against both Antwerp and KV Mechelen in the league and get knocked out of the FA Cup in one week, you can’t be happy. No points out of 6 is disappointing. But it can all change so quickly in football. Two weeks earlier we won two and drew one of our three games… after which everybody said we were back in the running to qualify for Play Off 1. It is important to look at the bigger picture all the time. On Sunday we proved we are playing like a team again, with the right fighting spirit, and we didn’t deserve to lose against KV Mechelen, who is a team in form. We are performing better now than we were in January.”
