A&H

Sheffield United - Tottenham

I am not sure why some ppl are arguing under current law this goal should be disallowed. This goal should have stood because it did not create a goal scoring opportunity. It created a build up which lead to a goal scoring opportunity and then a goal.

Yes the law could have been clearer but even under the current law this goal should have stood.
Next year's law has been changed so the intent is clearer by adding the word immediately. That is "touched their or a team-mate’s hand/arm... Immediately creates a goal-scoring opportunity"

Are you talking about the same incident?

The ball hits his hand, falls to Kane who takes 3-4 touches and scores, seems like a goal scoring opportunity to me.

It's about 4 seconds between the ball hitting his hand and Kane scoring.
 
Last edited:
The Referee Store
Are you talking about the same incident?

The ball hits his hand, falls to Kane who takes 3-4 touches and scores, seems like a goal scoring opportunity to me.

It's about 4 seconds between the ball hitting his hand and Kane scoring.
Yes. And that is enough. I said this before. Once the ball falls to Kane if he is fouled (before the extra touches and getting across the defender who is approaching) will you give a DOGSO? If not then it is not a GSO. Also see the clarification given by IFAB. The law was not meant for that situation neither was it worded that way. It is being misinterpreted.
 
It depends on what you think IFAB are trying to achieve really. We've long been aware of different interpretations of deliberate handball between English referee and European referees - are we fine and happy to accept this, or do we think the sport should be the same worldwide?

Rightly or wrongly, IFAB have clearly and openly taken the latter approach. They want a standardised sport, where every match is refereed the same and decisions will be as consistent as possible from game to game, country to country (allowing for some limitations such as what the referee's fitness allows him to perceive on the day). That means the rules get more and more specific, and it means that any inconsistencies or gaps that do exist in the law become important, because they detract from the overall goal of standardising the way the sport is refereed. So we debate them.

You could quite happily take the opposite approach and tell players that turn up "Here's a pitch, here's a ball, here's the referee - let's see what happens and hope he doesn't do anything too crazy". The inevitable consequence of this is that matches I referee will go very differently to the 80's style matches @Sheffields Finest looks after and so on with every other one of the thousands of referees around the world. I'm perfectly able to judge context and alter my decisions appropriately - but that's not what I'm employed to do, I'm employed to understand the laws and apply them as written.
Keep rolling your eyes when I post @GraemeS , you might eventually find what you're looking for!
 
Yes. And that is enough. I said this before. Once the ball falls to Kane if he is fouled (before the extra touches and getting across the defender who is approaching) will you give a DOGSO? If not then it is not a GSO. Also see the clarification given by IFAB. The law was not meant for that situation neither was it worded that way. It is being misinterpreted.

A goal scoring opportunity is not the same as an obvious goal scoring opportunity.
 
A goal scoring opportunity is not the same as an obvious goal scoring opportunity.

So are you saying if IFAB added 'obvious' to the relevant part you would have said the goal should have stood? And do you think IFAB has the foresight to add that word or any other word to make the law so that it is not misinterpreted?
Me thinks not.
This is not about simantics, it's about what the intent of the law is. And I believe it did not intend for this goal or the Man City one against Liverpool to be disallowed.
 
Not sure I totally agree, the law was changed because of incidents where players accidentally scored with their hands or arms, that was the controversy. Something like this wouldn't have even been discussed and no one would have had a problem with the goal.

But under the law as it is they had no option but to disallow the goal.
I agree 100% with the last line but if the law was changed only to stop players scoring with hand/arm, then they had no need to add the additional lines about leading to a gaol scoring opportunity. Now I know we all have differing views of the IFAB laws committee but if they ONLY wanted to stop players scoring with hands/arm they could easily have written the law that way.
 
So are you saying if IFAB added 'obvious' to the relevant part you would have said the goal should have stood? And do you think IFAB has the foresight to add that word or any other word to make the law so that it is not misinterpreted?
Me thinks not.
This is not about simantics, it's about what the intent of the law is. And I believe it did not intend for this goal or the Man City one against Liverpool to be disallowed.

I'm saying that an obvious goal scoring opportunity and a goal scoring opportunity are not the same thing.

Harry Kane getting the ball just outside of the area and needing to take 3-4 touches before taking a shot is a goal scoring opportunity.

Harry Kane getting the ball on the edge of the area and being 1 on 1 with the keeper is an obvious goal scoring opportunity.

Obviously the intent of the laws is not that either of these goals should be disallowed, but the wording of the current laws doesn't match the intent.
 
Oh, I don't know. " An indirect free kick is awarded to the opposing team if a goalkeeper, inside his own penalty area, controls the ball with his hands for more than six seconds before releasing it from his possession"

Essentially, reading this, you realise that keepers won that contest: https://www.fifa.com/news/goalkeepers-are-not-above-the-law-72050

Fair enough - as I've posted before that IS one law that is universally ignored. Also as mentioned before I heard a PL ref say that if he EVER penalised it, he would not be on a game the following week!
 
I agree 100% with the last line but if the law was changed only to stop players scoring with hand/arm, then they had no need to add the additional lines about leading to a gaol scoring opportunity. Now I know we all have differing views of the IFAB laws committee but if they ONLY wanted to stop players scoring with hands/arm they could easily have written the law that way.

Yes, agree, I think it is more that IFAB thought there was a problem that didn't really exist. Rarely can I remember much furore about accidental handball in the build up to a goal, the complaints were always about when the hand or arm scored the goal. There certainly wouldn't have been any complaints about the recent goals as no one other than VAR even saw the accidental handling.
 
Yes, agree, I think it is more that IFAB thought there was a problem that didn't really exist. Rarely can I remember much furore about accidental handball in the build up to a goal, the complaints were always about when the hand or arm scored the goal. There certainly wouldn't have been any complaints about the recent goals as no one other than VAR even saw the accidental handling.

Agree again! It DID happen to me once. Attacker took a swing at the ball, missed, ball hit his standing foot, bounced up, hit his arm, ball fell to him and he scored.

Earned a red card for defender(Under 16s I think it was) and a misconduct report for his words/behaviour towards me after the game!
 
I’m gonna disagree a bit again... my take is that the law encourages us refs to play safe with any accidental handball in an attacking zone.

Seems to me that the law is there to stop an accidental/incidental handball being part of a goal.

So, we can’t really be ”wrong” if we penalise an accidental handball by an attacker no matter how tenuous the probabiliy of magical assist or worldie. If we act fast no one will ever know, hence we can’t be ”wrong”!
 
Frankly I blame the Americans for making stuff up about interpretation in their "Ask the Referee" website.

Oh FFS. When in doubt, just thing of someone to blame. Damn the facts, full conspiracies ahead! The way of the modern world . . .

The Ask the Referee site was far from perfect. But it had a context. The site arose in the wild days of the internet to counter what USSF referee folk saw as bad advice being widely circulated. The US was, and still is compared to many countries, unsophisticated in soccer and its differences from how other sports are officiated. Jim Allen’s site, in large part, helped educate referees on the things that “everyone knows” that everyone in the US absolutely did not know.

Like Advice to Referees, which USSF published for many years, Jim sought to capture teachings from IFAB/FIFA, including those that got published and then became hard to find. And that tried to build some consistency in a country that didn’t have history and experience to help from that consistency the way traditional soccer countries did. (Though some of those countries had conflicting traditional understandings, as we saw when IFAB tried to harmonize a global understanding of handling.)

Did Jim and his team get things wrong from time to time? Sure. Resolving ambiguity is always going to have dissenters, and Jim, no more than any ref, was not a mind reader of the IFAB drafters. Those errors just got more publicity because they were advice to many instead of just an interpretation by a single ref that raised eyebrows on the field. Jim and his team regularly spoke to folks at FIFA/IFAB to correct things they published that were incorrect.

Despite its flaws, Ask the Ref and Advice to Referees were a huge service in educating US referees at a time soccer was exploding in popularity here with a shortage of experienced referees—such that people becoming referees had never played or been fans of the game.

I agree with you that the simple Laws with Q &A or the I&G at the back were better ways to run things than the current failed efforts to over define. But blaming that on the efforts of USSF to educate referees is pretty darn stupid.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Nij
Id love IFAB to come and show a video clips of to when a goal should be disallowed and when it should be allowed to play on.
 
I think there was a presentation/video distributed when the law changed...
 
The Ask the Referee site was far from perfect.
I think you (and @bloovee, who you were responding to) might be slightly mixing up the names of two different websites here. The site that used to be run by Jim Allen and had USSF backing was called "Ask a Soccer Referee" (askasoccerreferee.com). Although it lost its official USSF status some years ago, it still exists and is now run by Dan C. Heldman.

Then there's the "Ask the Ref" site (asktheref.com) which always was and still is, a totally unofficial site giving personal opinions from a panel of referees.
 
Last edited:
Oh FFS. When in doubt, just thing of someone to blame. Damn the facts, full conspiracies ahead! The way of the modern world . . .

The Ask the Referee site was far from perfect. But it had a context. The site arose in the wild days of the internet to counter what USSF referee folk saw as bad advice being widely circulated. The US was, and still is compared to many countries, unsophisticated in soccer and its differences from how other sports are officiated. Jim Allen’s site, in large part, helped educate referees on the things that “everyone knows” that everyone in the US absolutely did not know.

Like Advice to Referees, which USSF published for many years, Jim sought to capture teachings from IFAB/FIFA, including those that got published and then became hard to find. And that tried to build some consistency in a country that didn’t have history and experience to help from that consistency the way traditional soccer countries did. (Though some of those countries had conflicting traditional understandings, as we saw when IFAB tried to harmonize a global understanding of handling.)

Did Jim and his team get things wrong from time to time? Sure. Resolving ambiguity is always going to have dissenters, and Jim, no more than any ref, was not a mind reader of the IFAB drafters. Those errors just got more publicity because they were advice to many instead of just an interpretation by a single ref that raised eyebrows on the field. Jim and his team regularly spoke to folks at FIFA/IFAB to correct things they published that were incorrect.

Despite its flaws, Ask the Ref and Advice to Referees were a huge service in educating US referees at a time soccer was exploding in popularity here with a shortage of experienced referees—such that people becoming referees had never played or been fans of the game.

I agree with you that the simple Laws with Q &A or the I&G at the back were better ways to run things than the current failed efforts to over define. But blaming that on the efforts of USSF to educate referees is pretty darn stupid.
I'm sorry, but when I queried one "interpretation" where USSF (in askasoccerreferee.com) had said one thing then changed their minds, Jim Allen told me they'd "developed their thinking" (or words to that effect). This is well over a decade ago, and it was over something that was clear (in my day) but became and still is ambiguous. So if they meant to build consistency, they failed (at least in that one instance). Older readers may remember what it was about but I can't be bothered starting the hare running again.
 
I'm sorry, but when I queried one "interpretation" where USSF (in askasoccerreferee.com) had said one thing then changed their minds, Jim Allen told me they'd "developed their thinking" (or words to that effect). This is well over a decade ago, and it was over something that was clear (in my day) but became and still is ambiguous. So if they meant to build consistency, they failed (at least in that one instance). Older readers may remember what it was about but I can't be bothered starting the hare running again.

That does absolutely nothing to remotely support your premise that Jim's site is to be blamed for IFABs current problems.

Of course Jim/USSF got things wrong from time to time. So does every referee interpreting on his or her own.

IFAB/FIFA has been known to flip-flop, too.
 
That does absolutely nothing to remotely support your premise that Jim's site is to be blamed for IFABs current problems.

Of course Jim/USSF got things wrong from time to time. So does every referee interpreting on his or her own.

IFAB/FIFA has been known to flip-flop, too.
Ok. It was a bit flippant to blame the Americans. And if I'd not found the askareferee site useful I'd not have been annoyed by that one bit of interpretation.
Sorry for getting it out of proportion.
 
Back
Top