Not the night for Hannover nor for Sousa

The body language thing

Manuel Jorge de Sousa started with a low key approach which was not quite the right thing for this emotional match. His first bookings were okay, but he looked rather uninterested when he showed the cards and somehow his whole body language looked a bit lacklustre to me. This resulted in my opinion that de Sousa never really seemed to have a firm grip pf this match.

Mistakes and inconsistencies

De Sousa started to get it wrong when he gave a few clumsy freekicks in midfield. One striking mistake was the elevated foot on goalkeeper Zieler after 33 minutes when he waved "Play on" where a clear foul had to be called (possible yellow included). The second big thing was a penalty for a foul after 60 minutes where Stenman was booked but the incident was inside the box and not just outside like the referee team decided. The worst thing was the disallowed goal for Hannover (70'') when the AAR seemed to give the goal, but the AR - although much further away - decided "foul" when the Brugge player rather slipped (again a proof why AAR are pointless). On the whole, Sousa gave a lot of cards which seemed to have no impact on his "control" of the match.

The second penalty and the rest of the performance

The second penalty seemed less clear to me than the not given one, but in a way it was a compensation for the earlier mistakes by the ref team. The rest of the performance was okay, offsides seemed correct and the team was good in positioning. For the decisions on the whole, they were unlucky and favoured Brugge in the crucial moments of this match. Nevertheless, Hannover got a lucky moment when Stindl could have been sent off for a senseless push in midfield. He booked four or five people for dissent where a gesture or a quiet word at first might have been more effective.