A rather odd situation (Jewish footballer Etay Schechter receives a caution for "religious" celebration): [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoRvkx6dRr0"]YouTube- Yarmulke Goal!! Itay Schechter goal celebration - Hapoel Tel Aviv v Salzburg[/ame] Harsh or perfectly within the rules?
Oh boy, I would air on the side of caution. Sign of the cross, prostrating to thank Jehovah or Allah, I'm not booking him.
Excessive celebration? Inflammatory? Pre-arranged? Had the Salzburg player not been cautioned, it would've been a harder sell.
My first question would be: If the goal scorer had pulled out a Yankees baseball cap and wore it as part of his celebration, would I cation him? (Yes I would.) If yes, book him for the yarmulke. If no, then why would I caution him for the yarmulke? No in this case?, but yes if the opponent is a team from Egypt or a predominately Islamic country? Fun stuff. p.s. I'm not a huge Red Sox fan, so don't go there.
without watching it again..... he did pull it out of either his sock or shorts. the only thing I would caution him for be a prearranged celebration. However.... gezz, what a can of worms if you caution him or not, for whatever reason. I think I would let it go, but give the "let's move on" type of signal to him/them.
Isn't he altering his equipment during the match? Seems like that should be a caution regardless of what it is.
Thanks to all for the responses! Yes, I wonder whether the fact that it was a game between an Austrian side and an Israeli one (given certain historical antecedents like WWII) factored into the referee's decision.
See now that's just reaching for an answer. It's much more likely it's about celebration or equipment.
If he puts on a Yankees hat I'm sending him off and making a recommendation to the disciplinary committee for a significant suspension. I can't figure out why a caution would really be necessary in this case unless it went on so long you couldn't get the game going again. If I'm remembering correctly, Jews are required to have their heads covered when they pray, hence putting on the yarmulke so he can give his thanks to Yaweh. If he then puts it away and gets on the with the game what's the problem? By the way, if some one has a better knowledge of Jewish law/tradition, I'd really like to hear it, cause mines pretty fuzzy.
Here's why a caution is necessary, before the game you are supposed to check the players and they are to remove any and all things that aren't a part of the uniform. If they have a something or religious significance you are to check it and make sure that it is safe and then approve it or make sure they tape it down. This player didn't check with the officials before the game, he altered his equipment and must be cautioned for it.
In a FIFA match, the card comes out. In a local match, no way am I getting into that debate. Bold mine. FIFA has previously banned religious headcoverings from being worn during a match. That, combined with the above quote (pg. 116) is enough justification for cautioning the player at the international level.
• he covers his head or face with a mask or other similar item I believe 2007 law change was in response to player pulling mask from shorts in 2006 World Cup. Remember thinking "what was that?" when I saw it live.
Bingo. Here's my question though: what if he doesn't pull out the yarmulke and he is prolongingly praying on the opponent's side of the pitch? Delay of Restart? This is def. a sticky situation, but the yarmulke coming out makes it an easy decision... but I def. don't recommend pulling out a card for this in your sunday league...
haha sarcasm aside, tbh I wouldn't even say anything, just let the prayer ride out... this is Law 18 in my book.... as long as it isn't provocative or political in nature, it's best not to "pick a fight" in this situation (for a sunday league). how often do teams conduct a team prayer before taking the field to start and you're already past the scheduled kickoff time? are you really going to go over there and interrupt them to tell them to hurry up? back to the original prompt, i've had it come up while reffing a muslim team where they all went to the corner flag to pray after a goal was scored. They did their thing, i just made my presence known, made eye contact with a couple of the players that didn't participate in the celebration, and they got the message and we restarted with no problems. In the clip, you see that one player from each team gets cautioned after the goal. My bet is that the Salzburg player was pissed at the Tel-Aviv player's celebration and did something about it, not because he was praying, but because he wasn't praying on his side of the field, which inevidably led to a delay. I personally think the CR doesn't do anything if Schechter ends up on his side of midfield to celebrate (yarmulke or not), and i would've called that good reffing. It wouldn't have hurt, in this "delicate" situation, if the CR would've been more proactive around the celebration to encourage play to get restarted asap and to have prevented any potential situation from occurring.