The Final Penalty Juventus Never Got

Olympiastadion, Berlin, 6 June 2015, the 67th minute of the Champions League final. Morata had equalised Rakitić's early goal twelve minutes earlier and Juventus were the better side in that spell. Pogba received the ball inside Barcelona's area with Dani Alves tight behind him. Alves's left knee went into Pogba's right thigh and his right arm came across the Frenchman's chest as he tried to turn; Pogba went down. Cüneyt Çakır played on, and the additional assistant referee behind the goal did not signal.

From the next phase Messi drove at the Juventus defence, Buffon parried his shot, and Luis Suárez scored the rebound in the 68th minute. Neymar's stoppage-time goal made it 3–1. A few minutes after Suárez's goal Neymar had also headed in from Alba's cross, but the ball had come off his hand and the goal was disallowed — correctly, by most accounts.

SportMediaset's post-match review called it 'a clear penalty for Juve', and its reasoning is the prosecution's: before the arm came across, Alves's knee struck Pogba's thigh, which is contact that brings a player down regardless of any grappling. Patrice Evra, years later, called it 'a blatant penalty'. The referee had an assistant on the goal line with an unobstructed view, and neither official reacted.

The consequence turns a debatable call into a Messi Files exhibit. Roughly one minute separated the appeal from Suárez's winner. A penalty at 1–1 in the 67th minute of a final is the most valuable decision in football; even a saved penalty would have kept the ball at the other end for the minute in which Barcelona scored. Nothing about the prosecution requires a conspiracy — only that the decisive moment of the biggest match of the season went uncalled.

Eurosport Italy reviewed the same frames and reached the opposite conclusion: mutual grappling — 'both players clearly pull at each other' — no penalty, and an excellent night for the referee. That is the honest state of the evidence: two Italian outlets, neither with a Barcelona interest, split on it. Dani Alves's own account, given when a fan asked him in 2021, was that Pogba 'is falling on top of me'.

The defence also lays out the rest of the final. Pogba's earlier appeal against Alba was outside the area and correctly refused; Neymar's goal was correctly disallowed for handball with the help of the additional assistant; and Barcelona, who scored three, were the better team over ninety minutes by nearly every account, including Allegri's. A refused appeal in a box where both players are holding is the most routine non-decision in the game.

Law 12 in 2014/15 awarded a direct free kick, and a penalty in the area, for holding or pushing an opponent or for a careless or reckless challenge. Grappling between an attacker and a defender in the box was, in practice, penalised only when one player's action clearly brought the other down; mutual holding was, and is, routinely ignored. The Champions League used additional assistant referees behind each goal that season; there was no video review. The jury judges the knee and the arm against that law.

Suárez scored in the 68th minute, Neymar in the 97th, and Barcelona won 3–1 for a fifth European Cup and a second treble. No sourced complaint from Allegri about the appeal exists; his post-match comments were about Barcelona deserving it. The tribunal's replay picks up at 1–1 from the appeal, as Juventus, with Suárez scripted for the 68th and Neymar for stoppage time; level at the end means extra time, then the penalties the script always settles the same way.