Chelsea v Manchester United soft penalties

I think the two penalties awarded to Chelsea in this match shouldn't have been given. To me, they just looked too soft and not clear and obvious to award such a stiff sanction. I'm sure I've seen worse incidents in other matches where there was shirt pulling and much more obvious pushing / shirt pulling / barging where a penalty wasn't given, so why so harsh here? In both cases, I think the Chelsea player took a dive, ie simulation as they call it nowadays, the moment they felt the slightest touch and the ruse worked. Note that the commentators thought they were penalties and they know the game better than me, but even after repeated plays of the incidents, they still don't look like penalties to me. Those two penalties ended up costing ManU the match.

What do you think?


Full disclosure: I'm a ManU fan, but I try to be objective about decisions and I often think that our team got away with things they shouldn't have. I'd rather win fairly rather than cheating and / or injuring other players as that just ruins the game, especially the injuries.

Welcome to the forum. For professional matches you should post in the 'As Seen On TV' subforum.

The 'clear and obvious' threshold only applies to VAR checks. Both of these fouls were awarded by the on-field referee so 'clear and obvious' is not a factor. And when you say 'soft' unless you mean 'not a foul' then you are supporting the decision to give the penalty, because a 'soft foul' is still a 'foul'.

I think both of these are dives tbh

CaptainsPlease said:

Welcome to the forum. For professional matches you should post in the 'As Seen On TV' subforum.

The 'clear and obvious' threshold only applies to VAR checks. Both of these fouls were awarded by the on-field referee so 'clear and obvious' is not a factor. And when you say 'soft' unless you mean 'not a foul' then you are supporting the decision to give the penalty, because a 'soft foul' is still a 'foul'.

Click to expand...

I see it's been handily moved to there now.

The second bit I dunno, but I see where you're coming from. I think subjectiveness is inherent in the game as things can so often be interpreted different ways, especially from different camera angles and realtime v slowmo.