General Handball Madness...

[Essexyellows]

What is occurring with the handball rule ffs?
Eric Dier is jumping, facing in the opposite direction to the ball, being challenged by the other bloke behind him...................and gets a penalty against him?

 

[Foley]

I agree it is madness.
Whilst appreciating that the 'deliberate handball' rule usee to throw out some inconsistencies, it was far better than the current rule.
The top player will be aiming at arms to get penalties at this rate. Certainly not in the spirit of the game.

 

[Followtheox1]

I agree it is madness.
Whilst appreciating that the 'deliberate handball' rule usee to throw out some inconsistencies, it was far better than the current rule.
The top player will be aiming at arms to get penalties at this rate. Certainly not in the spirit of the game.

That is what Mane did in the champions league final against Tottenham.

 

[MattyGreensLeftBoot]

Sorry as a refetee I really dislike the previous law. The act of deliberate doesn't come into any other part of the game. You don't have goals dissalowed because they aren't deliberate. Penalty's are given even if the trip is accidental. For me the fact that there was another element of discretion for the referee to consider was often used as a stick to beat them with. I would much rather have a situation where it is black and white it either hits the hand or not. Imagine a shot going wide and accidentally hits a hand and goes in should that be hand ball?

 

[Whingit]

It's mad that the rules basically mean defenders have to run and jump like penguins now.

 

[QR]

Hopefully the growing consensus that it is now beyond ridiculous will force a rule change.

They should look at diving in the penalty area while they are at it. The slightest contact from a defender and forwards suffer instance paralysis in both legs!! I hate it. Blatant cheating. A few red cards following VAR should help cut it out.

 

[ttg17]

People say, 'this isn't a VAR issue, it's just a stupid rule,' but ridiculous decisions like this are the obvious consequence of introducing VAR. The rules necessarily have to change when the medium of identifying whether they have been breached has also been changed. When you can use super slow motion replays to analyse whether or not a ball has hit an arm, how are you supposed to construct a rule that continues applying handball in a way we are all familiar with, and allows any degree of subjectivity and common sense? VAR demands objectivity in what, in football, is an inherently subjective medium. Would it have been a handball if Dier had had his arm certain degrees more 'in'? Would people be complaining if he had been facing the ball? And two yards further away? Exactly how close does a defender need to be to the ball when it was hit for it not to be a handball? As soon as you introduce objective measuring of these things, which you need to do with VAR, the whole situation becomes ludicrous.

I was always firmly in favour if VAR. I thought that while people might grumble about decisions not being made in real time, it was a necessary sacrifice to make in preventing egregious miscarriages of justice from occurring. You think of classic injustices, like Henry v Ireland, and wonder how incidents like that can be allowed to occur with the technology we have available today. But I was wrong; maybe it's just the application of the rule in the Premier League (although, for the reasons described above, I don't think it is - I think it is a conceptual failing), but you are still seeing absurd decisions being made, with little upside. The entire spectacle is worse, as the sense of injustice is heightened given the availability of technology and, of course, the massive delays that aren't explained to fans in the stadium. I've been in stadiums where decisions have been referred to VAR - it really is utter, utter s**t. Noone has a clue what's going on, the whole game gets stopped for 5 minutes, and then boom, you've conceded a penalty. The way I see it, because, again, of that inherent subjectivity of the game, you're going to still get decisions which are perceived as miscarriages of justice, just as you did without VAR, just with all the additional baggage that comes with them. So, given those kinds of incidents are going to occur anyway, we might as well stick with the system that doesn't ruin a live game as a spectacle in itself.

 

[Bath Yellow]

If they looked at diving in the penalty area Kane and Ali would never score

 

[Marked Ox]

The handball law interpretation has come about as that is how it has been done in Italy and Spain and the PL has followed with this. It is ridiculous and as said above it is a consequence of VAR. Get rid of VAR and accept that to jump players have to move their arms away from their body. I remember far less controversial handball decisions when the Officials had to decide if it was deliberate or accidental. I'd rather Trevor Kettle making such a decision in our games rather than playing in a game with VAR and absurd decisions like these.

To highlight the laughable thing that VAR is, it apparently isn't a penalty to hug an attacking player when a corner is coming in, and then the same defender tug his shirt for 4 yards or so and stop him getting a free header when the attacker gets away from the defender. The VAR Official will have reviewed this in the Sheff Utd/Leeds game and decided it wasn't a foul on the Sheff Utd player yet VAR is supposed to correct obvious mistakes and this was clearly one of them. I don't know how more obvious a shirt being pulled that it is so tight it forms a large V from the wearer can be. The controversy doesn't go away with VAR, it just moves to different things.

 

[QR]

People say, 'this isn't a VAR issue, it's just a stupid rule,' but ridiculous decisions like this are the obvious consequence of introducing VAR. The rules necessarily have to change when the medium of identifying whether they have been breached has also been changed. When you can use super slow motion replays to analyse whether or not a ball has hit an arm, how are you supposed to construct a rule that continues applying handball in a way we are all familiar with, and allows any degree of subjectivity and common sense? VAR demands objectivity in what, in football, is an inherently subjective medium. Would it have been a handball if Dier had had his arm certain degrees more 'in'? Would people be complaining if he had been facing the ball? And two yards further away? Exactly how close does a defender need to be to the ball when it was hit for it not to be a handball? As soon as you introduce objective measuring of these things, which you need to do with VAR, the whole situation becomes ludicrous.

I was always firmly in favour if VAR. I thought that while people might grumble about decisions not being made in real time, it was a necessary sacrifice to make in preventing egregious miscarriages of justice from occurring. You think of classic injustices, like Henry v Ireland, and wonder how incidents like that can be allowed to occur with the technology we have available today. But I was wrong; maybe it's just the application of the rule in the Premier League (although, for the reasons described above, I don't think it is - I think it is a conceptual failing), but you are still seeing absurd decisions being made, with little upside. The entire spectacle is worse, as the sense of injustice is heightened given the availability of technology and, of course, the massive delays that aren't explained to fans in the stadium. I've been in stadiums where decisions have been referred to VAR - it really is utter, utter s**t. Noone has a clue what's going on, the whole game gets stopped for 5 minutes, and then boom, you've conceded a penalty. The way I see it, because, again, of that inherent subjectivity of the game, you're going to still get decisions which are perceived as miscarriages of justice, just as you did without VAR, just with all the additional baggage that comes with them. So, given those kinds of incidents are going to occur anyway, we might as well stick with the system that doesn't ruin a live game as a spectacle in itself.

All VAR determines is if the ball has hit the hand. Beyond that rules should allow the ref to apply common sense.

Firstly the ref has to judge if the handball was deliberate or not. If deliberate it's clearly a pen. If not deliberate, the ref has to determine if a clear unfair advantage has been gained as a result of the handball (e.g. would the ball have otherwise ended up in the back of the net or fallen to the feet of a player with a clear shot on goal) if so it's a pen. It ain't rocket science.

 

[Essexyellows]

I am all for some support for the referees who have a hard enough job as it is but they make their decision based on the natural pace & flow of the game.
Now VAR is a "thing" and substantial amounts of ££££`s ride on the decisions they are being taken to the `nth degree of stupidity.
The ball is coming from behind an airborne Dier with an equally airborne Carrol giving him some pressure, Dier must be thinking my next hit is going to be face first on the turf...


How in any semblance of normality that is given as a pen is beyond me.
If the ball was coming the other way and Dier had sight of it then yes, unnatural shape etc comes into it but it is the polar opposite.

 

[Marked Ox]

All Var determines is if the ball has hit the hand. Beyond that rules should allow the ref to apply common sense.

Firstly the ref has to judge if the handball was deliberate or not. If deliberate it's clearly a pen. If not deliberate, the ref has to determine if a clear unfair advantage has been gained as a result of the handball (e.g. would the ball have otherwise ended up in the back of the net or fallen to the feet of a player with a clear shot on goal) if so it's a pen. It ain't rocket science.

I don't think deliberate or not comes into it, it is whether the arm is in a "natural position" that is the determinant for a decision now and unless the arms are by the side or in the silhouette of the body then it is pretty much always given as handball for not being in a natural position. I don't know how your are supposed to jump high without using you arms and therefore in reality they (like Dier's were) are in a natural position but football likes to deny science/body biomechanics for purposes of football laws (see diving and both legs coming off the ground before there is contact etc etc etc).

 

[QR]

I don't think deliberate or not comes into it, it is whether the arm is in a "natural position" that is the determinant for a decision now and unless the arms are by the side or in the silhouette of the body then it is pretty much always given as handball for not being in a natural position. I don't know how your are supposed to jump high without using you arms and therefore in reality they (like Dier's were) are in a natural position but football likes to deny science/body biomechanics for purposes of football laws (see diving and both legs coming off the ground before there is contact etc etc etc).

I'm agreeing with you. A 'natural position' (and that includes raising your arms when jumping) is shorthand for accidental. Flailing arms trying to make your body shape greater is unnatural and deliberate.

This and what I posted above...

All VAR determines is if the ball has hit the hand. Beyond that rules should allow the ref to apply common sense.

Firstly the ref has to judge if the handball was deliberate or not. If deliberate it's clearly a pen. If not deliberate, the ref has to determine if a clear unfair advantage has been gained as a result of the handball (e.g. would the ball have otherwise ended up in the back of the net or fallen to the feet of a player with a clear shot on goal) if so it's a pen. It ain't rocket science.

 

[Marked Ox]

I'm agreeing with you. A 'natural position' (and that includes raising your arms when jumping) is shorthand for accidental. Flailing arms trying to make your body shape greater is unnatural and deliberate.

This and what I posted above...

I was more referring to your comment on whether it was deliberate or not as that makes no difference now unfortunately and my comment just flowed from it. It needing to be deliberate has been pretty much written out of the laws, or certainly the interpretation ignores it which is just plain stupid.

 

[ttg17]

All VAR determines is if the ball has hit the hand. Beyond that rules should allow the ref to apply common sense.

Firstly the ref has to judge if the handball was deliberate or not. If deliberate it's clearly a pen. If not deliberate, the ref has to determine if a clear unfair advantage has been gained as a result of the handball (e.g. would the ball have otherwise ended up in the back of the net or fallen to the feet of a player with a clear shot on goal) if so it's a pen. It ain't rocket science.

It might not be rocket science, but neither is asking, 'how long is a piece of string'. People brought in VAR because they wanted accuracy and consistency. You simply cannot have consistency with rules like, 'clear unfair advantage': one referee's 'clearly unfair' is another's 'mitigating factors'. With no VAR, that was fine: the ref either missed the incident, which is irritating but understandable, or made a subjective judgment call, which you could disagree with but, again, could understand. Trying to implement this subjectivity in an objective way with slow motion replays and multiple referees looking at once was never going to work - so the rules had to be tweaked to be more 'objective'. Ironically, if they keep these rules in place, we probably do now have a more consistent and 'accurate' system: the BBC report on the incident says that a handball now occurs when, "The hand/arm is clearly away from the body and outside the "body line"," and/or, "The ball touches a hand/arm that is clearly raised above the shoulder." Like it or not, Dier's arm was up and outside the body line. It's a penalty. But people want, rightly in my opinion, the referee to have a degree of flexibility and judgment when deciding whether or not an incident of ball hitting arm (or indeed of player tackling player) should be considered a foul. That is not compatible with a system predicated on achieving consistency across the league through the use of dozens of camera angles and frame-by-frame slow motion replays.

 

[ttg17]

I think the more fundamental problem, which nobody in the punditry or wider football media really seems keen to address, is what we actually want the handball rule to be about. We have the clear extremes at both ends of the spectrum: Luis Suarez v Ghana, definite handball; Eric Dier v Newcastle, never a handball. But there is such a massive middle ground - your Jonny Mullins v Northamptons, for example (yes, I'm still bitter). For some reason that incident is seared into my memory - yes his arm did prevent a ball which had been nicked back past him from landing in a promising attacking position for their player, but his arm was by his side and the ball was struck from such close range, what else could he have done? We don't want every contact of ball and arm to be a penalty, but we want some kind of remuneration for an attacking team whose offensive efforts have been disrupted by an illegal body part.

Perhaps the answer is to introduce indirect freekicks for non-deliberate handballs? The issue that seems most absurd about this whole thing is that the punishment is wildly disproportionate to the crime. Having a ball blasted at you from close range that happens to knick your forearm shouldn't give the other team what is essentially a free goal. Penalties can still be awarded for your Suarezs, as they are deliberate, but the far less dangerous indirect free kick can be awarded for an inadvertent, but still impactful, handball by a defender. Or perhaps that just adds another level of baffling subjectivity to the whole endeavour.