One of the great changes in the Super League this season is that there have been fewer controversial decisions from referees than in the past. Although controversial or erroneous decisions have not been completely eliminated, the referee is no longer the protagonist of the game from the previous rounds of the league, and although there are some wrong decisions, there are few penalties that affect the outcome of the game. However, since the 8th round of the Chinese Super League, there have been two consecutive rounds of controversial penalties that affect the trend of the game, and the discussion about the game after the game has basically focused on the referee.
At the same time as the 9th round of the Chinese Super League, the Football Association released the 5th referee review of the season, and so far the referee review has gained a good reputation, and there is no bias towards the referee or the club. One of the cases in the 5th review was the match between Beijing Guoan and Zhejiang, in the 2-1 victory of Guoan against Zhejiang, Leonardo created a penalty for Zhejiang, and the referee did not award a penalty at that time, but the video assistant referee Ma Ning intervened to let the referee change the judgment and awarded a penalty.
The review found that VAR intervention was wrong, because Leonardo had fouled before he made a point, so the foul of the national player should not be counted. The referee did not indicate that the decision was correct, but VAR intervened incorrectly, resulting in a reversal of the final decision. Media person Li Xuan believes that Ma Ning's counterjudgment is not a problem of business level, but an ideological problem, and Li Xuan hopes that the Football Association can investigate the ideological roots of Ma Ning. Ma Ning has been reused by FIFA and AFC in recent continental competitions, which shows that his business level is among the top in Asia, but if there is a problem of counterjudgment, then it may be a problem in other aspects.
In addition, in the 9th round of the Chinese Super League, Zhejiang team 4-1 Henan team, referee Tang Shunqi repeatedly made penalties that caused dissatisfaction with the Henan team, especially Zhang Jiaqi's elbow to Covic, who had a slight concussion, but the referee only awarded a penalty, because Zhang Jiaqi himself had a yellow card, so the referee did not even have a yellow card. However, Tang Shunqi directly showed a red card for the same elbow action in the previous game, and such a non-uniform penalty standard caused great controversy.
After the game, the title sponsor of the Henan team directly issued a message to denounce it, and the sponsor said that he could accept the failure, but would never accept such a failure. It can be said that the sponsors are angered, and the consequences are very large, if the company loses confidence in the penalty of the Super League, then there will be no more sponsorship. After the game, the Henan team has collected materials overnight and appealed to the Football Association, and this appeal is likely to appear in the next Football Association review, and the possibility of determining that the referee made a mistake is very high.