Higler's Explanation Is Crystal Clear On Air: Why Groningen Were Not Awarded a Penalty Against Ajax

Referee Dennis Higler stepped in front of the microphone and, within forty seconds, said more than any English refereeing body has published in an entire season. That is the entire value of this story — not the penalty, but the fact that a man with decision-making authority dared to stand up and narrate his own decision-making process in his own voice. When I was fired, I did not lose my profession — I lost my faith in the people sitting in the stands. And every time a referee is willing to speak the truth on air, that faith is patched back together a little.

The original story is very simple. Davy Klaassen of Ajax missed a penalty. Minutes later, the same player lunged into a challenge inside his own penalty area, arriving too late, and Brynjólfur Willumsson of Groningen went down. The Euroborg crowd roared for a penalty. Higler waved play on. VAR Van de Graaf was unconvinced by the on-field decision and called the referee to the monitor. Higler reviewed it, upheld his decision, and then went on ESPN to explain.

That is the entire factual base. And if you stop reading here, you will think this is a short news item about a rejected penalty. Wrong. This is a lesson in how the refereeing system operates — and where it still leaks.

What Higler actually said is not what most viewers heard. He said two separate things. First, the contact only occurred after the ball had long gone. Second, Willumsson slid across in front of him, created the contact path, and did not touch the ball. The crowd heard the first half and roared that if the ball is gone, it is still a foul. They are correct in law — a late challenge with careless contact remains a foul under Law 12, regardless of where the ball is. But the first proposition alone is not enough to exonerate. It is the second proposition that forms the backbone of the argument: the attacker threw himself into the defender's path and effectively manufactured the contact. That is a legitimate 'manufactured contact' defence — but it is a subjective judgment, not an objective fact. And neither Goal.com nor ESPN questioned this point. They presented the explanation as a verdict already handed down.

This is where I want to stop longer than anyone else.

Read the structure, not the ball. Klaassen is a midfielder. A central midfielder — not a specialist centre-back — executing a last-ditch lunge inside his own penalty area. That positional detail tells you more than the challenge itself. It means the ball was turned over in a dangerous area, the defensive line had pushed up and been broken, and the last man between the goal and the opposition striker was a midfielder. The sliding tackle is the symptom. The cause is a defensive structure that collapsed seconds earlier, in an area where no one on the Ajax coaching staff wants to see the ball lost.

I have watched hundreds of matches involving Europe's biggest clubs and this pattern repeats with suspicious regularity. When a possession-dominant side pushes its full-backs high and drops a midfielder deep to build play, that same midfielder becomes the last line of cover in transition precisely because he drops deep. The positioning that makes him useful in build-up is exactly the positioning that forces him to slide inside his own box. That is not an individual error. That is the structural cost of an attacking system.

And this is the number worth looking at. A missed penalty is worth roughly 0.75 to 0.80 goals of expected value at standard conversion rates. A penalty conceded minutes later is worth the same in the opposite direction. The total swing across one short passage of play is around 1.5 goals of expected value. That is why the reaction was so violent. People were not reacting to one decision — they were reacting because this is the largest single swing a football match can produce outside a red card. Within the shortest window, the same player stood at both ends of that swing. Klaassen missed at one end, then nearly conceded at the other, in the same breath.

No article told that story. They merely recorded him as the actor in two events. But the psychological load on a veteran player, designated penalty taker, who has just dropped a chance to score and then minutes later has to lunge to save his team inside his own box — that is a test of character no data table can measure. And it deserves to be told more than a rejected penalty does.

But the detail that truly caught my attention is not that Higler upheld his decision — it is how he did it. In the recorded exchange, he asked the VAR: 'Do you have another view of the contact for me?' Read that line carefully. This is not a referee defending himself against an accusation. This is a referee using the VAR as a camera operator and an analyst, working with a colleague to find the truth rather than confronting a colleague to protect his ego. That is a materially healthier process than the model English football applies, where referees and VAR are placed in public opposition and every dispute is escalated into a communications crisis.

And this is where I must say plainly what commentators in Korea and Asia usually avoid: VAR was not created to produce consistency in penalty-area contact decisions. It was created to correct objective factual errors — offside, ball out of play, mistaken identity. 'Clear and obvious error' is the threshold for recommending a review, not the threshold for overturning a decision. The on-field referee retains primacy. Higler applied the procedure correctly. VAR Van de Graaf also applied the procedure correctly by calling for a review. Two people both did it right, and still reached two different conclusions. That is not a system failure — that is the nature of the system. Anyone expecting VAR to deliver perfect justice on penalty-area contact simply misunderstands the tool.

But there is a price here. When viewers see two qualified officials look at the same footage and reach two different conclusions, trust in the review threshold erodes far more than when there is merely one contested decision. Higler explaining on air is an act of transparency. But if only the referee's post-hoc explanation is published, without the full audio of the referee–VAR exchange, the system is still telling half the story. And the other half is the half with higher probative value.

Truth only steps out when the stadium is empty. At the Euroborg that night the stands were not empty. They were roaring. And precisely because of that, Higler's decision, right or wrong, was read through the lens of volume rather than through the Laws. A decision against the smaller home side and in favour of the travelling giant always generates far more noise than the reverse. That is not evidence of bias. It is the arithmetic of attention. Ajax has many times more supporters and national media footprint than Groningen, so every decision involving Ajax is amplified nationally, while decisions involving Groningen stay local. But the paradox lies here: precisely because Ajax is bigger, a decision against them generates far less noise than a decision against the smaller club. This is why Groningen supporters always feel hard done by — not because referees are biased, but because the media amplification structure is asymmetric.

I called it beforehand: Dutch football has a transparency model English football does not dare adopt. Referees go on television and explain. That is a governance standard, not just journalism. It creates an auditable record and shifts the debate from 'was he biased?' to 'was his reasoning correct?' That is a genuine upgrade in accountability. But it also sets a precedent: every explanation opens the door to a second cycle of controversy, and every incomplete explanation creates new doubt.

Where can I be wrong? In that I am reading a single passage of play and inferring structure. There is no xG data, no PPDA figures, no passing map in the source. I do not know the match result. I do not know the round, the standings, the form. If Ajax won comfortably, this decision had no competitive value and the entire controversy is just noise. If Groningen lost by a single goal after the 90th minute, this decision is a real wound. I do not have those facts, so I am not permitted to claim it had an impact. That is discipline. And that discipline applies equally in the other direction: no one is permitted to claim VAR 'saved Ajax' without knowing the match result.

If I could choose one change, I would choose publishing the full audio. Not the referee's post-hoc explanation, but the entire exchange between referee and VAR, in real time, made public after the match. Because when both sides of the conversation are brought into the light, the question is no longer 'was the referee biased' but 'did the process function correctly' — and that is a question football can actually answer.

The empty stadium is where truth steps out from data, not from chanting. At the Euroborg, the data was absent. There was only the roar. And Higler, the only man with decision-making authority, chose to speak rather than stay silent. In an industry where people sitting in the moral grandstand usually choose silence to protect themselves, that alone is worth acknowledging.

The question that remains is not whether the penalty was correct. The question is: does your league dare to let referees speak the truth on air, or does it still let them hide behind the VAR room door?

You can buy players, buy coaches, but you cannot buy a football that lies. And you cannot buy a process that protects itself through silence.