Grodowski accepts Zupfer: "It's my job to help the team"

The key scene on Saturday evening: Patrick Alt shows Tim Oberdorf a yellow card and a red card. IMAGO/osnapix

In the first Saturday evening game of the 2025/26 second-division season , Tim Oberdorf lined up on the right wing near the touchline in the 44th minute, lost the ball to Joel Grodowski , and immediately followed up – albeit unfairly in the opinion of referee Patrick Alt . He deemed the center-back's slight tug a foul and immediately showed him a second yellow card. "Why we ended up with a man down is still a mystery to me," revealed Daniel Thioune in a Sky interview.

Despite watching the action that initiated Arminia's comeback victory several times, he assessed it differently than Alt. "I agree that this tugging can lead to an opponent completely losing control of his legs and then falling. Then it's also a foul," the 51-year-old explained, initially somewhat ironically, before continuing: "But to punish it in such a way, in the assessment that something major could have resulted from it, then I say, then I have a lot of fouls where something major could have resulted from it."

For this reason, he didn't blame his protégé for the foul. Instead, he took issue with his decision not to "break away from the back early" and the previous yellow card. Grodowski was obviously aware of the first warning before the challenge with Oberdorf. Accordingly, he went down after the slight tug. "It's my job to help the team with this," explained the striker. While he admitted it wasn't a "hard foul," it was still a foul.

Today, many moments went our way.

It was the key moment of the game. Bielefeld subsequently turned a 0-1 deficit into a 5-1 victory. "Today, a lot of moments went our way. Especially with the yellow-red card, we were tough enough to play it down," said Mitch Kniat .

Despite the significance of Alt's decision, his counterpart dismissed it immediately after the final whistle. "I can't change it now. I think the lads will look at the pictures and will certainly realize that the decision was too harsh," Thioune said.