Touching the ball after a whistle

Many rules have unintended consequences, and absolute rules often result in situations that are worse than those they're intended to address.

Teams trying to be friendly and sportsmanlike often tap the ball back to the point of the restart...whether for themselves or their opponents. An absolute ban would mostly likely punish peope who are trying to be helpful (who would naively be relying on the referee to be able to tell the difference), and have no calming effect on games where tensions are rising.

Similarly...usually the only time that a team will dig the ball out of their opponent's goal is to hurry the esuing kickoff---usually because they are desperate to get the game restarted, either because they now only one goal down, or they're one goal away from a favorable goal differential in a tournament. In my opinion, punishing them for trying to do this will only inflame tempers.

Referees can prevent either situation from becoming a problem by timely action without any heavy-handed intervention by FIFA. Delaying the restart is already a cautionable offense; and a referee who reassures the team that is desperate to get the game moving again that he'll be adding any time the other team wastes will likely be more helpful---and find himself with fewer avoidable problems---than the referee who metes out punishment for doing so.

Perhaps I'm just lucky, but I've never had a problem in either regard. My own pet peeves run more toward players hacking one another; I find that taking care of that problem usually makes most of the others go away.

 

They did, and it worked horribly in an experiment they tried at a Youth WC (U17?). Players were being cautioned simply for being helpful.

So IFAB revised it, and issued it in the 2006 Laws of the Game, under the Additional Instructions. It remains in the 2007 LotG:

 

Many cards for this were issued in the last World Cup as well.

 

The touching it after a foul is called is a pet peeve of mine as well (after a goal is not as absolute for me personally, although you are correct that possession does pass to the team that was scored on). As written, the rule gives me the discretion to deal with both situations, but doesn't bind me if I don't think the game requires it. The "helpful" player referenced in other posts is a real issue. Ball goes out of bounds for a throw-in. A fan throws the ball back to the spot but it rolls onto the field. The would-be thrower is standing at the sideline where the ball is supposed to be thrown in. The opponent is standing 10 yards away from him right next to the ball. The opponent takes a strategic look behind him to see that his teammates are ready. And then passes the ball to the would-be thrower so that play can restart. He doesn't have to assist them in this manner, but there's no reason to card him for it. The absolute rule created a serious problem with this.

Now, if that pass goes 7 yards wide of the thrower and was hit with unnecessary force so that it goes past the fan who initially threw it, or if the thrower comes to pick it up and then the opponent moves it away or taps it past him right as he bends down to pick it up, that's entirely different.

There are easy cases and more difficult ones, and, unfortunately in my opinion, many referees do not pay as much attention to this as they should - which may be the real point of this thread - as those little touches often are strategic to prevent a quick restart, but an absolute rule creates many more problems, in my opinion.

As for the post-goal situation, it's been discussed in a prior thread if someone wants to search for it. The second kick for emphasis can be a form of taunting, but the bigger issue comes from the grabbing the ball to take it back to midfield. The reality is that the team doing it is "usually" trying to speed up the restart - they've just scored but are still behind - and as long as there isn't physical contact between anyone and they're just running the ball up to midfield, that seems more important to me personally than any "right" to pick the ball out of the goal. Of course, if the goalie has already picked up the ball and it's being ripped from his hands, it's a different situation all together. The main point in this situation for me is to get the ball back in play - the quicker the better, so a word perhaps rather than a card is generally more productive in my mind, but it's really a situation where I think discretion is very important.

Just my thoughts, on the rule itself and on how I apply it myself.