WHU vs Man City

[PinnerPaul]

I've seen Anthony Taylor and other UCL refs give advantage for holding someone without it being clearly a promising attack and then going back and caution for USB or showing a lack of respect for the game. IFAB, imo, does give leniency to the referee to use the ethos of the laws to uphold them in 'what football expects'. Wouldn't surprise me to see the laws updated to reflect that deliberate handballs (which were mandatory YCs in Spain for years for being USB- lack of respect) and extra holding/pulling are cautionable offenses. A diving save of course can't be CR/EF and even though it says that SPA-H is a YC, it's never stated other handballs can't fall under lack of respect for the game, which e.g. just catching the ball in midfield can obviously be

Cautioning for a lack of respect for the game, or anything else, is a cop out. The law was changed to bring SPA in line with DOGSO, if you can sell that the challenge was reckless then fine, go for it. But if it was something like a minor shirt pull you can't call that reckless, and the fact that law specifically says that you can't caution after playing advantage for SPA means you would be incorrect in law to make up a "lack of respect for the game" caution. Exactly the same as if you played advantage on a clear DOGSO, you can't go back and red card for it even if you felt the challenge had a lack of respect for the game.

I don't necessarily agree with this particular law change, but it is what it is. Just as I don't agree with the new law about drop ball for the ball hitting the referee, but I still applied it tonight even though it led to a dropped ball on the edge of the defending team's penalty area and a load of grief for me and explaining to do.

Agree Rusty about the laws we don't like, but can't just ignore. Those arguing about the top level examples being for 'lack of respect' - how do you know - unless you have access to referee's report no way of knowing what caution code/reason the referee has used?

On the the flip side, as we know, have discussed and I have personally heard confirmed from a top level referee, the GK six second law IS universally ignored.

 

[RefIADad]

OK, let's move off of the "blatant hold". Let's say that it's a clearly cynical/late trip that isn't reckless. Everyone in the park knows that the defender didn't have a real opportunity to play the ball, and you know the defender's intent was to commit a tactical foul. You are able to play advantage on this foul.

Are you really going to just let that type of play go and justify not giving the card with "Well, it didn't stop the attack, so I'm not going to caution it?" I would certainly hope not. If you do, good luck with your match control. If we are trying to get cynical/professional fouling out of the game, that needs to be a USB caution regardless of whether you play advantage or not.

Again, the interpretation of this law is "If the ONE AND ONLY reason you were going to issue a caution was for stopping a promising attack, then do not caution if you play advantage. If you would have cautioned regardless of the advantage, then still caution at the next stoppage." It's not "ignoring the law" if you were going to caution the foul for USB anyway.

 

[GraemeS]

OK, let's move off of the "blatant hold". Let's say that it's a clearly cynical/late trip that isn't reckless. Everyone in the park knows that the defender didn't have a real opportunity to play the ball, and you know the defender's intent was to commit a tactical foul. You are able to play advantage on this foul.

Are you really going to just let that type of play go and justify not giving the card with "Well, it didn't stop the attack, so I'm not going to caution it?" I would certainly hope not. If you do, good luck with your match control. If we are trying to get cynical/professional fouling out of the game, that needs to be a USB caution regardless of whether you play advantage or not.

Again, the interpretation of this law is "If the ONE AND ONLY reason you were going to issue a caution was for stopping a promising attack, then do not caution if you play advantage. If you would have cautioned regardless of the advantage, then still caution at the next stoppage." It's not "ignoring the law" if you were going to caution the foul for USB anyway.

I once sent someone off for a knee high tackle. Him and his team didn't think it was a red card, I even had one or two members of the opposition suggest it wasn't. But I had no doubt, so I showed the red card. You think that decision did my "match control" any good?

Match control is another of those nebulous concepts (like "bringing the game into disrepute" or "unspecified USB") that tells us how to act when there is wiggle room or a lack of clarity in the law. It does not exist to allow us to knowingly make wrong decisions just because we're afraid of the consequences.

I'm baffled this is still going on, because the law gives us a very clear and straightforward answer. In a sense this is all quite academic - I can't stop you going out to your matches and completely ignoring this once very clear piece of law. But the fact that you're clearly going to go out there and deliberately make laws up have very little to do with what the actual correct decision is.

 

[RefIADad]

I once sent someone off for a knee high tackle. Him and his team didn't think it was a red card, I even had one or two members of the opposition suggest it wasn't. But I had no doubt, so I showed the red card. You think that decision did my "match control" any good?

Match control is another of those nebulous concepts (like "bringing the game into disrepute" or "unspecified USB") that tells us how to act when there is wiggle room or a lack of clarity in the law. It does not exist to allow us to knowingly make wrong decisions just because we're afraid of the consequences.

I'm baffled this is still going on, because the law gives us a very clear and straightforward answer. In a sense this is all quite academic - I can't stop you going out to your matches and completely ignoring this once very clear piece of law. But the fact that you're clearly going to go out there and deliberately make laws up have very little to do with what the actual correct decision is.

I’m not making laws up. I’m following the proper interpretation of the law.

Considering the level of matches I work, there are people who think I’m doing something right in the work I do.

 

[ChasObserverRefDeveloper]

When you guys have sorted this out, please turn your attention to the election rules in the US . . .

 

[GraemeS]

I’m not making laws up. I’m following the proper interpretation of the law.

Considering the level of matches I work, there are people who think I’m doing something right in the work I do.

I agree that you can find a bit of law that with some stretching and squeezing can just about let you justify that caution. Of course, you have to completely ignore the very clear bit of law that says "you should not caution for this" in order to get there, but still....

So far you've used "match control" as a justification for the decisions you make and what is broadly speaking "club marks" as evidence that what you're doing is working. If you can manage to work "Spirit of the Game" into your next post, I think we'll be able to call bulls*** excuses bingo.

 

[RustyRef]

I don't know how much clearer I can be. I am not cautioning for SPA. It is a different USB I am cautioning for. An unspecified USB, which the law allows, or lack of respect which also the laws allows. I would caution for those regardless of if it is SPA. How is that wrong in law?

The law was not put in there to let players get away with other USB if it is also SPA. It was there to remove a caution if the USB was only SPA and advantage was played, which 'supposedly' means promising attack was not stopped.

I know what you are saying, but that doesn't mean I don't think you are fundamentally wrong.

 

[one]

A player is running with the ball. An opponent behind him verbally distracts him causing him to stop (this bit is not for debate. It's a clear verbal distraction). He looks around confused. He then realises what happened and continues with his run with a clear path. I signal advantage acknowledging an offence has occured (if I should play advantage is not for debate, I just did). Should I caution/not caution at next stoppage if:

1. The offence occured in the player's own PA with many opponent's in their own half (no promising attack)
2. The offence occured in the attacking third during a promising attack.

 

[RustyRef]

A player is running with the ball. An opponent behind him verbally distracts him causing him to stop (this bit is not for debate. It's a clear verbal distraction). He looks around confused. He then realises what happened and continues with his run with a clear path. I signal advantage acknowledging an offence has occured (if I should play advantage is not for debate, I just did). Should I caution/not caution at next stoppage if:

1. The offence occured in the player's own PA with many opponent's in their own half (no promising attack)
2. The offence occured in the attacking third during a promising attack.

Verbally distracting is totally different to SPA so I am struggling to see the relevance.

 

[socal lurker]

I think we've beat this to death.

I believe that everyone agrees that if a foul is cautionable for a reason other than SPAA, then it is still cautionable after playing advantage, even if it was also SPAA.

The disagreement is whether a non-reckless foul can be considered USB for its cynical nature as disrespect for the game or as general USB. That debate applies to something that is also SPAA, but also to a foul that occurs in a non-SPAA context. Some think it is impossible, some appear to think it common, and some (including me) think it is possible but extraordinarily rare.

I don't know that there is anything left to say here that is going to change anyone's mind about that actual disagreement.

 

[one]

@socal lurker I don't believe your assessment is correct. Because they agree that non-reckless foul can be considered USB under lack of respect or unspecified USB (cynical or not) if it happens when not SPA. The disagreement is that it can not be cautioned if its also SPA.

I must add verbal distraction is cynical by nature. In either case 'cynical' is irrelevant as there is no such thing in the LOTG. Only if the referee deems an action USB.

Verbally distracting is totally different to SPA so I am struggling to see the relevance.

I take that as you would caution in both 1 and 2.

You struggle to see the relevance because you fail to associate the cause and effect concept to SPA. SPA is the effect. Cause is the the action that causes it. SPA is only an offence if the cause is an offence which can be no card, caution or send off. If SPA is an offence, it is always a caution unless you play advantage. The advantage goes to both the cause offence and the SPA (effect) offence. In this case the new law requires you to not caution for SPA (the effect offence).

In case of advantage you have so far agreed if the cause offence is a reckless challenge, or verbal distraction, you will caution for the cause offence even though the laws no longer allow you to caution for the effect offence. However you are saying if I determine the cause offence to be "lack of respect" or "unspecified USB", and caution for that cause offence, I would be wrong in law.

So my next question, can I have a list of cause offences I can caution for when the effect is SPA and I play advantage (or is it just reckless and verbal distraction)? And where do you get this list from?

Hope you can see the relevance now.

 

[GraemeS]

@socal lurker I don't believe your assessment is correct. Because they agree that non-reckless foul can be considered USB under lack of respect or unspecified USB (cynical or not) if it happens when not SPA. The disagreement is that it can not be cautioned if its also SPA.

I must add verbal distraction is cynical by nature. In either case 'cynical' is irrelevant as there is no such thing in the LOTG. Only if the referee deems an action USB.


I take that as you would caution in both 1 and 2.

You struggle to see the relevance because you fail to associate the cause and effect concept to SPA. SPA is the effect. Cause is the the action that causes it. SPA is only an offence if the cause is an offence which can be no card, caution or send off. If SPA is an offence, it is always a caution unless you play advantage. The advantage goes to both the cause offence and the SPA (effect) offence. In this case the new law requires you to not caution for SPA (the effect offence).

In case of advantage you have so far agreed if the cause offence is a reckless challenge, or verbal distraction, you will caution for the cause offence even though the laws no longer allow you to caution for the effect offence. However you are saying if I determine the cause offence to be "lack of respect" or "unspecified USB", and caution for that cause offence, I would be wrong in law.

So my next question, can I have a list of cause offences I can caution for when the effect is SPA and I play advantage (or is it just reckless and verbal distraction)? And where do you get this list from?

Hope you can see the relevance now.

Do you know what offences can result in a yellow card? Yes? OK, take that list, and cross off SPA. There's your list of non-SPA offences that can result in a yellow card when advantage is played on SPA.

If the answer to that question is "No", then we've got more serious problems than this detailed technical discussion about the double-jeopardy on SPA.

 

[JamesL]

If I understand the argument, I think i side with @one here.
A careless foul that stops a promising attack does not become reckless because of that, its a simultaneous offence where we punish the most serious act ie SPA.

Careless + SPA + advantage = no caution
Reckelss + SPA + advantage = caution for reckless
UEF + SPA (advantage or not) = Red card for UEF.

Summary, where an offence is committed simtaneously alongside SPA and advantage played, we must still administer the sanction for the non SPA offenve. If the only offence is SPA and advantage, then no card should be issued.

 

[GraemeS]

If I understand the argument, I think i side with @one here.
A careless foul that stops a promising attack does not become reckless because of that, its a simultaneous offence where we punish the most serious act ie SPA.

Careless + SPA + advantage = no caution
Reckelss + SPA + advantage = caution for reckless
UEF + SPA (advantage or not) = Red card for UEF.

Summary, where an offence is committed simtaneously alongside SPA and advantage played, we must still administer the sanction for the non SPA offenve. If the only offence is SPA and advantage, then no card should be issued.

Correct. Seems very straightforward to me.

What people who are trying to justify a caution are saying however, is that there is a 4th category - challenges that are careless, SPA and advantage is played, but also upset the referee's sense of fair play in some other unspecified way, so they should be entitled to caution anyway. And that's the bit that I'm describing as "making s**t up".

 

[Redster]

SPA is what lawyers would call a strict liability offence - it can be committed without a guilty intention. Read: merely careless.

What @one seems to be saying is that there are offences which are unsporting not only because they stop a promising attack, but because they are intended by the offender to be against the spirit of the game. Prolonged shirt pulling and rugby tackles would fall into this category.

I cannot accept that the IFAB intended to hamper referees from cautioning in these circumstances. They have not closed the category of USB. All they have done is said that if an offence for which advantage played is SPA simpliciter, the referee is not to go back and caution. It does not prevent going back for something else. It must be remembered that a reckless challenge is still just USB at the end of the day.

 

[GraemeS]

SPA is what lawyers would call a strict liability offence - it can be committed without a guilty intention. Read: merely careless.

What @one seems to be saying is that there are offences which are unsporting not only because they stop a promising attack, but because they are intended by the offender to be against the spirit of the game. Prolonged shirt pulling and rugby tackles would fall into this category.

I cannot accept that the IFAB intended to hamper referees from cautioning in these circumstances. They have not closed the category of USB. All they have done is said that if an offence for which advantage played is SPA simpliciter, the referee is not to go back and caution. It does not prevent going back for something else. It must be remembered that a reckless challenge is still just USB at the end of the day.

But again, you have to remember that for any of this discussion to be relevant, the referee has played advantage.

So to take your examples - if a prolonged shirt pull has been carried out, but the attacker has still managed to break free and manage a good shot or pass, then why are we worried about some ineffectual shirt pulling? And if he hasn't managed a good pass or shot, then any advantage you play has to go down as a mistake by the referee. We don't get to caution players just because we've screwed up, that seems less fair to me than anything else that's been claimed as "unsporting" in this thread.

By all means, count it as a level up on the stepped approach, or as one notch towards a PI caution. Pull him aside for a bollocking if you like. But you just can't caution for that one single act if you decide it's ineffectual enough that the opponent benefits more from just playing on - even if that decision then turns out to be wrong.

And your rugby tackle example is even simpler. On a football pitch that's just reckless, full stop. So you go back and caution regardless of an advantage or not.

Again, you're desperately trying to invent complexity here. Everything anyone has argued for either is either explicitly a caution, explicitly not a caution or only an issue as the result of a poor decision to play advantage when the referee should have stopped play. 5 pages into this thread and no one has actually produced a single good example of this "grey area" that people seem to insist exists.

 

[Redster]

So as I understand it from you, the dispute is not so much whether it is wrong in law to go back and caution for other USB offences which coincide with an SPA, but rather the issue is that you can't see how any of this would come up without the referee having played a ridiculous advantage.

I think that might be a fair point. But conceptually, we can't consider ourselves bound not to issue yellow merely because we have played an advantage.

 

[GraemeS]

So as I understand it from you, the dispute is not so much whether it is wrong in law to go back and caution for other USB offences which coincide with an SPA, but rather the issue is that you can't see how any of this would come up without the referee having played a ridiculous advantage.

I think that might be a fair point. But conceptually, we can't consider ourselves bound not to issue yellow merely because we have played an advantage.

Again, I don't necessarily actually agree with this law change. But I do think it's very clear in what is expected of us, even if we don't like it.

"Other USB" and "bringing the game into disrepute" exist for the real freak events that happen once in 10,000 matches and that are potentially impossible to predict. What they don't exist for is a routine foul, that has a clear punishment laid out in other areas of the LOTG, but when the referee has a personal dislike of the set punishment for that foul.

And the same applies to advantage. We are expected to make a decision - is it better for the offended-against team to play on, or for us to stop play and apply relevant sanctions & restarts? In most other areas of the pitch, we accept that we have to make that choice and accept that we might sometimes get it wrong but still have to go along with the decision we've made. Yet in this specific case described, people want to play a bad advantage and then still hand out cards as if they hadn't messed up. Again, I can certainly make a case that's an unfair doubly-whammy against the offending team.

 

[one]

@GraemeS mate I don't know what you do for a living but if you are not already, find a pathway to politics, you'd make a good politician.

 

[GraemeS]

@GraemeS mate I don't know what you do for a living but if you are not already, find a pathway to politics, you'd make a good politician.

I'm going to choose to take that as a compliment!

I'm an industrial chemist. But actually, within that, a huge amount of what I do for a living is digest tedious documents (data sheets's) and explain complicated concepts to people who might not have the same level of technical background as me. This kind of discussion and the need to be precise about fiddly details/distinctions is very much in my wheelhouse, albeit slightly more related to what I did at my previous job where I was sales-adjacent, rather than currently where I'm not.