The play and attitude of "Maksimir" would hardly have been enough for Montenegro to threaten Croatia if Andrija Bulatović had not been sent off, but the impression remains that the pearl of the "Falcon" was sent off too harshly in that match.
German referee Felix Zweier showed the Lens midfielder a second yellow card in the 42nd minute, and the "falcons" then conceded three more goals for Croatia's 4:0 aggregate victory.
Without diminishing the triumph of their rivals in the World Cup qualifiers, the decisions of the referee from Berlin were also commented on by two of our most experienced players, Stevan Jovetić and Stefan Savić.
What's interesting is that they're not the only ones - before them, Jude Bellingham and Virgil Van Dijk were also known to object to the judicial knowledge of the real estate agent from the German capital.
However, all of this doesn't have to be difficult for Zvajer compared to the scandal at the beginning of his career.
It was 2005 when he was suspended for six months for his role in a match-fixing scandal.
Everything was hidden for a long time, and then "Zeitsch" published the "Zweier File" which stated that a referee from Berlin had earned a ban from the German Football Federation as an assistant referee to Robert Heuzer, who was found to have taken bribes to fix several matches he refereed in the Bundesliga 2.
Zweier then allegedly accepted a bribe of 300 euros before a match in which Wuppertaler played, and later informed the German federation about Heutzer's fixing, along with three other referees.
He also found himself at the center of the German public in 2021 when Jude Bellingham, then Borussia Dortmund midfielder, publicly criticized him for his refereeing in the Bundesliga derby against Bayern Munich.
"What do you expect when a referee who previously fixed matches is appointed to officiate the biggest match in Germany," Bellingham said at the time, earning a fine of 40.000 euros for it all.
After that derby, Zweiger took a break from refereeing, but found himself back in the spotlight during the 2024 European Championship, where he refereed the semi-final between England and the Netherlands - interestingly, another match in which Bellingham played.
This time, however, it was the players on the other side who were angry with him, primarily because of the penalty awarded to "proud Albion". Even one Englishman, Jamie Carragher, said that Denzel Dumfries' tackle on Harry Kane could never have been a penalty, and the Dutch captain also spoke out after the match.
"I don't know what to say, I don't know if I should even say anything about it - the best thing about his refereeing is that he left the field quite quickly after the game, he didn't even have time to shake hands with the players," Van Dijk said at the time.
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In the meantime, Zweig has become one of the referees in whom UEFA has great confidence, and so he refereed the Nations League final between Spain and Italy, and last season the Champions League semi-final between Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal, and then the Europa League final between Tottenham and Manchester United.
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