You make the call. Nott Forest v Arsenal

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/riyad-mahrezs-penalty-disallowed-manchester-10414665

Pretty similar looking situation.

 

Sorry but it doesn't work like that. If you want to say that for a single attempt the taker can have a successful outcome or not then that is obviously correct (but also utterly useless for this discussion and the point you tried to make).
But as soon as you want to say something about what that outcome will be (call it chances or odds or probability or prediction or whatever you want) then you cannot treat them as having separate probabilities.

 

Just out of curiosity, how many other instances of double touch would you ignore? And how would you argue that the difference between giving a goal to the attacker or a FK to the defence is trivial?

 

I was wrong on this. My quote was from the section of Law 14 on KTFM. Apologies. The law on PKs is the kicker can not play the ball until its touched by another player. However, I think we agree about this, despite the fact that it worked against my team. Fortunately, it wasn't decisive.

I don't want this to become like the NFL where referees are viewing in minute detail whether the ball moved during the process of making a catch. OMG. If a live person in real time can't tell... Please NO.​

 

Which is exactly what I was saying!

No, because I was trying to point out that the player most likely would have scored. It only later developed
into this discussion of numbers.

[/QUOTE]But as soon as you want to say something about what that outcome will be (call it chances or odds or probability or prediction or whatever you want) then you cannot treat them as having separate probabilities.[/QUOTE]
This does not make sense. There are only two outcomes. You cannot score 50% of a goal.
Those percentages apply to outcomes of a large number of individual attempts.

PH

 

Yes it is. And I think Madley was wrong here for all the previous reasons I have been mentioning. This is
a perfect example of "gotcha refereeing" IMO.
No player in his right mind would deliberately do this when taking a PK. It is the fault of the pitch usually.
The referee has given the PK presumably to compensate for an infraction that most likely may have had an impact on the attacking team's ability to get a shot on goal. Then to take the goal away on this basis flies in the face of all we know
about fairness and the spirit of the game.

PH

 

When it is clearly unintentional and not deliberate. The Law does not say double touch. It is written to prevent a player
from dribbling the ball away from the free-kick himself.
Or if it is mis-kicked and rolls away, he cannot now run after it and kick it again (as e.g. might occur in games with less skilled players mostly.)
(As an aside the whole concept is quite weird on the face of it. If it is truly a free-kick, the player should be allowed to do what he wants in this regard. But that is a different matter, which I have heard some people at IFAB say might be looked at anyway!)

PH

 

How likely?

 

But you have to decide what you are talking about.
Either you are talking about what could happen (possible outcome) but then percentages aren't needed at all. It is also irrelevant to the discussion here.
Or you are talking about what will happen (expected outcome) but then your "100% or 0%" statement is utterly incorrect as probabilities doesn't work that way.
But enough of math class, it really isn't the main point here.

Guess we'll have to agree to disagree then.

 

No problem. I don't expect to be able to educate everyone, but perhaps some people who read
my writings will be enlightened, and the game will be the better for it.

PH

 

Yeah, I'm talking to my assistant on this one and getting input but I believe this is one of those cases where spirit of the game... I'm going with kickoff.

 

Trifling. We all make decisions in every match as to what we regard as trifling violations of the LOTG. For me this one falls in that category.

The thing about trifling is it’s ITOOTR.

 

Speaking of which, and to take this well-flogged conversation in a slightly different direction -- how are we teaching "trifling" to new young referees now? We know its provenance in an old IFAB decision and that it survives under the rubrics of "common sense" and "the spirit of the game." We know, because it's now pretty clearly one of those things that we "just know."

So how do you teach it to a young referee, especially (as a thought exercise, using as an example the incident sparking this thread) where making a decision one way or the other is match critical in that it results in a goal/no-goal determination?

 

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

PH

 

Well it sure is easier when there is consensus. Madley says not trifling (in example I gave above). Moss apparently claimed he didn’t see the double touch in the arsenal game (http://metro.co.uk/2018/01/07/jon-m...ouch-award-penalty-goal-arsenal-loss-7210943/) - of course that doesn’t exactly answer what he would have called if he had, but one infers that he would have called it If he saw one. I certainly feel that the arsenal pk could very well be too close to be seen in real time.

Dean evidently thought Joe Hart’s double touch on a goal kick to not be trifling (http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/29973934). Of course, this example is different because Hart’s second touch meant the ball was still not in play, quite a different situation from the pk.

Griezmann scored a double touch pk in champions league, but I don’t think the players made a fuss about it during the game noticed.https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/6ajqa7/video_showing_griezmanns_penalty_versus_real/

But, I feel that to be clear to new refs, we must not conflate “trifling” for “slight.” Trifling means “without consequence,” while as we all know, there’s no such thing as “slight” when determining ball out of play or direction of a restart.

I really crave some authoritative guidance here, because the main reason most of us haven’t dealt with this in a game is because most double touch pks end in horrible misses- it’s just a matter of time until it happens to anyone in particular.

Does anyone have any examples other than the ones put forth so far?

 

As far as I can recall there have been numerous examples of this - and most of them (IIRC) have ended up as goals.

One that sticks in my memory (as it involved my team, Middlesbrough) was the penalty taken by Boudewijn Zenden in the 2004 English League Cup Final.

See 3 minutes into the following clip:

 

In the Middlesbrough example, if there was a touch it was microscopic. Neither the players nor the announcers seemed to notice it.

I would suggest that the rule of thumb in this situation is the same one used on almost any call:
If you can tell it happened, you whistle it.
If you can't tell, if you are doubtful, then you don't.
If you think the impact on play was small, then you may consider it trifling.

The case in the OP is problematic because upon video review: 1) though doubtful in real time, there was a second touch; and 2) it seems to have changed the trajectory of the ball. Unfortunately, as the VAR discussion demonstrates, there are no good rules of thumb for video review.