Welcome to this week's edition of Don't Fight The Laws, in which I combine my years of being a referee with my years of being a smartass to provide my answers to your questions about the Laws of the Game, controversial decisions and other odds and ends relating to referees and what they do.
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Got a question? Send it over to canadiansoccerguys@gmail.com. But for this week, we have the following...
How do referees assess a hand ball foul? Do they really try to evaluate if it was or wasn't intentional? Do they become a little less severe when the hand ball is committed in the penalty area? What if a free kick is blocked by a wall and accidentally (touches) the arm protecting the chest or face of a man in the wall? Does the referee have to evaluate the situation or is it automatically called? -- Carl St-Gelais, Sept-Iles, Que.
Whew, quite a bit here. First thing's first. A hand ball is a lot like pornography. (Write your own punchline here.) What I mean is, I can't describe it, but I know it when I see it. The Laws provide general guidelines, but each individual call is at the discretion of the referee, who takes all sorts of things into account when making a decision. It means there is always going to be some degree of inconsistency from one game to the next, but until a techie hermit living in a basement in Kuala Lumpur takes time off from making sex robots to invent a footie-reffing cyborg, it is what it is.
But as to whether that judgment becomes more severe in the penalty area, Carl, the answer (officially) is no. There is nothing in the Laws stating that any foul is to be called any more or less harshly if committed in the penalty area than outside of it. But, of course, everyone pays more attention if a borderline hand ball results in a late-game penalty kick (see Wynne, Marvell circa 2009) than an aimless midfield free kick.
And as for guys in the wall -- again, the rules are the same as anywhere else on the field (but, of course, the likelihood of the ball striking a player's arm is much greater if they're in a wall). The Liverpool-Tottenham game I hit on last week provides a good example. The arm went up, ostensibly in protection of the defender's face... but the contact occurred above the defender's head. I think the referee got it right, in that instance.
The guidelines appended to Law 12 state that "(h)andling the ball involves a deliberate act of a player making contact with the ball with his hand or arm." Referees are further instructed to consider whether the arm actively moved towards the ball, and the distance between the ball and the player (did it strike him before he had time to move his arm away?) The Law further states "the position of the hand does not necessarily mean that there is an infringement".
So where does this leave us? The same place we started. Refs will keep making decisions in this regard based on their subjective judgment, and the supporters will continue to bitch and moan if their team is penalized, while shrugging meekly and saying "hey, it goes both ways" if their team benefits... at least until the Malaysian sex-robot guy becomes a fan of soccer and does away with that bothersome "human element" of officiating.
(On the subject of hand balls, someone ask me about the recent trend wherein refs dole out yellow cards for meaningless hand balls that occur at midfield. Please.)
Can the ball be thrown into the net on a throw-in? Does it count as a goal if your own team does it? -- Some Unidentified Person
Yes, presuming they have sufficient strength and aim, a professional footballer is physically capable of throwing the ball into the net on a throw-in. Next.
Alright, fine. I presume you're asking about a situation like this infamous bumble:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLawwFbGWS0
While the commentators wonder what the stewards were doing "to allow those idiots on the pitch", I wonder what the referee was doing to allow that goal to stand. While the Laws are often pretty ambiguous, Law 15 lays it out in black and white: "A goal cannot be scored directly from a throw-in."
Perhaps the ref believed the 'keeper had made contact with the ball (though it doesn't look like it), which would make the goal legit. But either way, a throw-in is like an indirect free kick -- if it enters the opposing goal without touching a second player, there's no goal, and a goal kick is awarded. If it's your own net, the correct decision is a corner kick for the opposing side. (Remember, it just needs to touch that second player to be goal-ready, not be actively controlled.)
But... there is a way to throw the ball into the net and be awarded a goal.
If the goalkeeper controls a ball in play inside his/her own penalty area and -- through some nearly-impossible combination of superhuman strength, gale-force winds and utter indifference/incompetence by everyone else on the field -- manages to hurl it into the opposing net, the goal stands, even if it doesn't touch anyone on the way in.
Of course, the soul-crushing own goal is a lot more likely:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ7xTUpIqpg
When is a free kick an indirect or direct free kick? I have never seen a non-direct free kick in professional soccer but it seems an oft-asked question of the ref in rec leagues. -- Some Unidentified Person
I guarantee you've seen an indirect free kick in the pros, if you've ever seen a player called for offside. That's right, the ensuing free kick for the opposing team is an indirect one. But since the ball isn't anywhere near the opposing goal -- minimizing the chances of a shot on the opposing goal -- no one ever bothers to mention it (since it doesn't really matter). The way to tell is to glance at the ref: when the kick is indirect, he/she will hold his/her arm straight up when the kick is taken, and lower it once the ball touches a second player.
Beyond that, an indirect free kick is given for dangerous play (a.k.a. "high foot"), impeding the progress of an opponent (i.e. obstruction off the ball) or preventing the opposing keeper from releasing the ball. A goalkeeper can also be punished with an IFK for handling a passback or wasting time. And the indirect free kick is also a fallback option for the ref if someone's punished with a card for some bizarre situation that isn't covered in the rules.
Despite the fact that every single free kick I've ever awarded in youth soccer has resulted in multiple kids asking "Is it one touch or two?", the truth is, the difference is negligible in pro soccer. On the few occasions when the difference does matter, we get ridiculous looking situations like this (skip ahead to 1:15):
And if the Lithuanian national team can figure out how to circumvent the constraints of the indirect free kick, then perhaps the rule is about as useful as the condoms in the Malaysian sex-robot guy's wallet.
(Oh, and to save you the effort of googling it, Lithuania is currently 39 places ahead of us in the FIFA rankings. Sigh.)
That's it for this week. Send me an email at canadiansoccerguys@gmail.com, and your query may turn up in the next edition of Don't Fight The Laws.