Yes, it was a penalty. It was a penalty when it happened, and it's still a penalty on the replay. There is no version of modern football where a defender shoves an attacker in the back with both hands, inside his own box, while that attacker is through on goal, and everyone just nods along and says play on.
⚡ Big upset:Fenerbahçe had a 17% chance before kickoff and beat Liverpool 3–2.
17%
That's exactly what Kostas Tsimikas did to Mason Greenwood midway through the first half in Istanbul. Greenwood was played in behind. Tsimikas couldn't get there cleanly, so he got there with his hands, both of them, planted in Greenwood's back and knocking him off balance before he could get a shot away. Independent match analysis and the referee-watch columns agreed on what it was: both hands in the back. The pictures don't argue either. This isn't a mystery.
And still, no penalty. Clément Turpin waved the appeals away, and nothing afterward changed his mind. Whatever the cameras had, whatever the angles showed, the decision stood and Greenwood got nothing.
One detail should end the argument on its own. Liverpool.com, sympathetic coverage if there ever was any, ran a headline about the team "getting away with one." This is the winning side's own press conceding the officials got it wrong, which carries more weight than any complaint from the away end.
The pundits weren't gentle either. Ally McCoist, asked whether Tsimikas got away with one, said: "I think so, I really think so. He pushes him both hands when he's in the process of having an attempt on goal just because it doesn't look like it, doesn't make it not a penalty." He went further elsewhere, flat out calling it a penalty and saying Fenerbahçe had been robbed. Former PGMOL chief Keith Hackett hammered the non-call publicly too. Nobody's out there defending it as the right call. I looked.
Tsimikas is a left-back caught in a broken moment, doing what desperate defenders have always done when a forward gets the wrong side of them. You can't be shocked that a player shoved. Shoving is in the job description the second you're beaten. That's why the officials exist. The whole system runs on the idea that a defender will foul when it suits him and someone with a whistle and a bank of monitors will punish it. The player committed the offence. The failure of judgement belongs to the match officials, who had the real-time look, the replays and the technology, and decided none of it was worth a spot-kick.
It wasn't an isolated wobble either. The ref-watch coverage flagged it as one of several questionable calls in the match, including a similar challenge earlier that went unpunished. Consistency was never going to save this one.
Strip away the names and ask what you'd want if it happened at the other end. Your striker is through, a defender grabs him with both hands and shoves, your striker goes down, and the referee shrugs. You'd be furious, and you'd be right. Fenerbahçe have exactly that grievance.
Tsimikas fouled Greenwood. But Tsimikas isn't paid to referee himself. The people who were paid to get this right stood there with every tool they needed and let a textbook penalty disappear.
