Interesting situation in the San Jose - RSL game. A foul occurred just outside the box, and the ball went wide to an attacker on the wing. The referee didn't make a signal (at least not one apparent on tv) and the fouled attacker was standing facing away from the ball complaining to the referee. The wing attacker then played the ball back to the fouled player, where it bounced off the back of his foot. The referee then called the foul.
If the attacker's do not want the advantage I advise not forcing it upon them. This is assuming that they didn't use their advantage and then want a "double dipping" so to speak.
What is missing is how long the time between the foul and the call was. Soccer is not basketball. Refs dont whistle instantly. A referee is supposed ( or at least advised) to take 2-3 seconds to see if advantage develops before signaling it. That's a pretty long time.
i like andy's process as well- i am bit of a chatterer as a ref, as it helps the players as well as me. but andy's verbiage is still ambiguous: it borders a little on coaching, which we shouldn't ever do, and is not clear to the fouled player if he will get the call if he immediately stops playing: perhaps a player who hears that may think that the referee is insisting that play continue. silence might be preferable to that. again, i would love for there to be a standardized language. a player who is fouled, when deciding whether to push on or not, should not be confused by the referee as to what his/her options are.
I'm a talker myself...and use visual cues as well, like pointing to my eye as if "I saw it". Can't speak for others, but it helps me tremendously.
I think when I asked that question I had some vague notion that maybe because you're moving the point of the restart from where you stop play, it ought to be a wait-for-the-whistle-boys? In the same sense, sorta kinda, as the throw-in restart after a substitution requires the whistle and thus is termed (somewhere in the literature or commentary thereon, can't remember where) "ceremonial." And again, kinda sorta the way we make them wait for the whistle to restart when we've initially signalled the wrong direction and have to correct it... ?
Listen to them. Watch their body language afterwards. Ask them. Watch the warm-ups. Is there a player practicing free kicks from around the top of the penalty area? Ask him/her then - "After all this practice, you won't be wanting me to play advantage around then?"
