Kwasniok's subtle criticism of the referee: "If you're always using a GPS..."

1. FC Köln put up a good fight against FC Bayern in the cup match and deservedly led before an offside goal turned the game around in favor of Munich. FC coach Lukas Kwasniok didn't want to blame the refereeing team afterwards, but was nevertheless annoyed by the incident.

Lukas Kwasniok didn't want to attach too much importance to the controversial scene. picture alliance / SVEN SIMON

"We managed to put Bayern Munich under pressure for 30 minutes," Lukas Kwasniok said, pleased with his Cologne team's performance, but he still had to congratulate his counterpart Vincent Kompany on a "well-deserved victory" – after all, the game lasts 90 minutes. Following a spirited start and a not undeserved Cologne lead, Bayern Munich needed just under seven minutes to turn the game around and ultimately secure a comfortable 4-1 victory in the second round of the cup.

The record cup winners' advancement was somewhat bittersweet, however, when one considers the sequence that led to Munich's equalizer. Having escaped Cologne's man-marking, Bayern's Konrad Laimer cut inside and found Josip Stanisic . Ron-Robert Zieler managed to parry Stanisic's low shot, but Luis Diaz was on hand to pounce on the rebound. The problem: the Munich goalscorer was offside – and by a considerable margin – when his teammate took the initial shot.

Kwasniok: "I think he can see that, if not must."

"That was half a meter," Kwasniok observed – and he was right. However, the refereeing team led by Tobias Welz didn't notice the incident and couldn't be alerted to it, as the video assistant referee (VAR) isn't yet in use in the second round of the cup. Given the clear offside position, Kwasniok was adamant: "I think he could have seen that, if not should have."

Accordingly, he urged referees not to blindly rely on VAR as a fallback option. "That's a problem," the 44-year-old believes, "but if you always use a GPS, you eventually stop learning the roads, you forget them. They can rely on VAR, and then suddenly it's not there. I think that influences the decision-making process somewhat."

"Sooner or later they would have crushed us, that's just how FC Bayern is."

Nevertheless, Kwasniok made it clear that this was "not a criticism at all," but that they had needed "that little bit extra." "Then we might have gone into halftime with a 1-0 lead. Bitter for us, bitter for the fans, but: sooner or later they would have crushed us, you have to be honest about that. That's FC Bayern," the coach stated – and still found it "a shame."