Scandal in Cologne: Substitute clears on the Goalline

The city of Cologne is a football crazy city here in Germany. The city's top club 1.FC Köln (FC Cologne) is fighting for survival in the Bundesliga but there are other clubs like Fortuna Köln (Regionalliga, fourth division) and FC Viktoria Köln 1904 (NRW-Liga, fifth division) who have their own fan following.

At FC Cologne the situation has been crazy for month's now to say the least, but on Wednesday evening during a NRW-Liga match between Viktoria Köln and KFC Uerdingen something unusual happened infront of 3,802 spectators in the Cologne World Cup stadium (Rhein-Energie Stadion) with even German international Lukas Podolski present.

It is the 84th minute when Köln's keeper Dominik Poremba is beaten by a Orhan Özkaya shot, but just before the ball crosses the line substitute Andreas Moog, who was warming-up behind the goal, jumps in and clears the ball. Uerdingen players charge at Moog for his unsporting behaviour with Moog given a red card by referee Thomas Menzen, which later turned out to be wrong then he should have only given a yellow card for coming onto the pitch.

But Moog's Viktoria Köln team mates knew about Fair Play and allowed the resultant Uerdingen indirectly free-kick to pass for the final 2-4 result. Viktoria lost the three points, but they remain top of the league and are set to gain promotion into the fourth division. But the story of this seasons NRW-Liga will be Andreas Moog and his goalline clearance even though he was not on the pitch.