Oh, when I first saw it live I was 100% DOGSO and shocked he went yellow. I also think it still has to be red. And, no, I'm not going to give him the benefit of the doubt. But you got to admit that giving a red card for a foul when the ball is literally behind the attacker is an odd occurrence.
I don't necessarily agree that Kovacs instictively read all this. But I'm obviously with you on everything else.
Yeah - a better lexical choice to explain what I meant would have been 'he instictively read something wasn't quite right/normal with the DOGSO'.
Interesting debate on the studio show post match on the "goal kick / keeper plays / defender reaches down and touches with his hand" incident in the Barca match. I thought Christina's comments were spot on - can't imagine giving that as a PK even though by the letter of the law it is. Thoughts?
I was just going to type about it....and why is this happening more often in games the past 12 months? The consensus here in the past was also on Unkel's side which was "common sense" and to retake the goal kick. Henry was trying to provoke good conversation on why you get to pick and choose on why certain plays are "common sense" and other plays are "Well, it's in the LOTG". If you watch carefully, even Kovacs is moving his arm upward and considering whistling this.
Man I have a lot of thoughts. Here, the referee blows the whistle when the goalkeeper had the ball at his feet for a goal kick. The ball was not moving. The goalkeeper passes the ball to his teammate who then puts his hand on the ball first, then passes it back to the goalkeeper. That's what happens. Is it an offense? This has happened before. Once in a Champions League QF no less: Bayern v. Arsenal in April 2024 (not called, not sent down). Then last season it occurred in the group stage Champs League match between Club Brugge and Aston Villa (called, penalty given, confirmed by VAR). I'm pretty sure something similar also occurred in the NWSL sometime recently and I thought the referee crew re-took the goal kick. If I remember right it was a match last season involving the Chicago Stars, but I don't remember if there was a PRO "Inside Video Review" discussion about it. I like the decision today. I don't think this should be a penalty under the circumstances. But I'll also lament that it keeps getting harder to defend "common sense" decisions in some aspects of LOTG application in the era of VAR. This scenario is an extension of that. This would be a nothingburger 15 years ago, but people (fans, players, etc.) are being conditioned that penalties will be awarded for what appear to me "small" or "minor" offenses, and have a tough time distinguishing when common sense prevails over the laws themselves. Also...in the era of VAR...what are VARs relying on to get to "check complete" here?
Yamal is obviously an incredible talent as I believe he may have drew both cautions. However, between him spending a third of the game on the floor trying to "draw a foul" (dive) and Vinny Jr yesterday, it's really ridiculous.
15 years ago, it couldn’t have been an offense because the ball was not in play till it left the PA . . . ITOOTR the GK was not taking the GK, but was knocking the ball over to his teammate to take the GK. No offense for VAR to find as the ball was not in play. Shrug. I still advocate to take some of the ambiguity away, and have a GK/FK in play when the ball leaves the GA. Doesn’t solve all the problems, but would help with many of these scenarios. I’d do the same thing on CKs.
Barça forum mod here, and I'm with @Mikael_Referee 's thinking above on the Cubarsí/Simeone play that resulted in the defender's expulsion. I wonder what you all make of this interpretation: I think Kovacs's two options were red card or no call. The VAR was correct in asking him to reconsider the initial call of yellow card. But I don't think it merited a red, and not just because I wear blaugrana-tinted glasses. It looks like the VAR immediately "rounded up" this play to a DOGSO situation 1) because Kovacs's yellow was categorically not the correct call, and 2) because the resembled what DOGSO usually describes: an attacker ahead of the defender with a "clear path" to the goal. However, the action did not correspond to the criteria of DOGSO. The ball came in behind Simeone. Let's grant him the assumption that he's reaching his leg back to try to get the ball, not to draw contact with Cubarsi. It's only for a split-second that he's in that motion, and this is not a DOGSO. If Cubarsi doesn't touch him, Simeone would have to slow his momentum, stop to gather the ball, and by then Cubarsi will have caught him and gotten into good defensive position. Or, we have to imagine Simeone pulling off some rainbow flick or other improbable skill on the ball to get it into his running path. Again, not in the realm of OGSO. Now, Cubarsi does make contact, and he is the "last man." But: "last man" isn't the rule. Denial of an Obvious Goal-Scoring Opportunity is. There is no single instant of that play where Simeone had that Obvious Opportunity. The ball was never at his feet, in his possession. Crucially, Simeone's touch doesn't push the ball out in front of him toward the goal. Because the pass arrived between them, it was as much Cubarsi's as Simeone's ball to win.
I think you're all overthinking this, the ball was perfectly weighted and he was fouled from behind, this is a red card. There are too many hard calls already for us to make the easy calls hard.
I do think this is mostly where I am. And it's why I said it is understood as red and has to be red (and the implication is that I'd give red--without VAR). But I'm just not sure I can get to "perfectly weighted." For me, the weird thing here is trying to assess whether or not the attacker truly was very likely to possess the ball and have an OGSO. Looking at it this morning, I'm more convinced that he would than I was last night. But the various dynamics here (long ball, foul occurs while the ball is still behind the attacker, attacker running straight/rightward while ball will go leftward) just makes that specific question almost uniquely complicated. Of course, complication leads to over-thinking. So back to the main point, I default red. But this is certainly an interesting one for classroom instruction/debate.
Help me understand this as it is whirling around in my mind. https://static.ussdcc.com/users/1662046/837738/promising-attack-considerations.pdf > Page 7, it says if one of the DOGSO considerations is not met it is an SPA situation. If we are thinking that maintaining control of the ball is at issue but the other considerations are met, would it not then be a SPA YC? Could that have been possibly why he went YC first? (I don't mean to direct this at you @Mikael_Referee solely, but I haven't figured out how to do a multi-quote yet. This is more a general question for everyone.)
The online discourse around this goal kick incident is quite frustrating, for me at least On the one hand, my perspective is: how can you want a champions league game potentially determined by what I feel falls into the category of “gotcha refereeing”? Ball stayed in goal area, defender was a foot next to him, passed it right back, and nearest attacker was top of penalty area on opposite end. Talk about the cost-benefit analysis of calling this as a penalty in the closing minutes of the match. On the other hand, people whining about how “professional players should know better” and that if you don’t call this a penalty then players will continue doing this stuff. I mean I just can’t imagine that his post match evaluation would go well if he called this as a penalty. I just can’t imagine that UEFA would be happy by him doing this.
To multi-quote, you just click on the the next post you want to quote and it will drop in. FWIW, I think this is DOGSO. Is he absolutely getting to the ball? No. Is he likely to get to the ball in front of the goal? Yes. And the other factors are clear. (I'm not going to delve deeply into the morass about whehter it is clear enough that it is DOGSO that VAR should get involved. My sense is no for the PL and yes everywhere else.) As far as whether it could be SPA, I think that is an interesting question. It's pretty easy to say that if defenders or distance from the goal aren't met for DOGSO it can be SPA. But if it isn't likely that he gets to the ball, how is there a promising attack? Or is there a scenario where it is likely enough to get to the ball that it is a promising attack, but not likely enough to be DOGSO. Perhaps that is where the R was before the review?
Maybe IFAB will come out with a clarification like they did for the incidental double touch PK issue from last year. Some guidance would be helpful. Thinking about my small world ... calling this in a tourney final or high school playoff game ... I'm just not giving a PK here.
No serious individual would be whistling a PK here, but even a FIFA Referee briefly considered whistling this as a PK if you're judging body language (or maybe he considered blowing the whistle to have them restart it to avoid confusion...which caused confusion anyway?). I think the double-touch was mandatory to clarify, but I'm not hopeful that IFAB will do so here, even though it's happened a few times in the past year. As an aside, everyone is entitled to their opinions, but I'm still getting getting video feeds on my social media timeline of the coaching staff venting in post-game press conferences that not only should it have been a PK, but a red card should have been issued as well. Apparently, they are also experts on the criteria for DOGSO.
I do not feel like there is any need for “guidance” here. The only thing they could potentially put in is partially reverting back to the old rule and say “the ball isn’t in play and can’t be challenged until it leaves the goal area”. That would pretty much give an objective way where you could give a PK if it’s touched outside the GA (like happened in some Aston villa game, which was correct) as opposed to the current protocol
For those asking for guidance, I ask--what guidance could they possibly give that would be helpful? As far as I can see, it would take a Law change to get past the simple answer that it is in the opinion of the referee as to whether the ball was put in play. They aren't going to give guidance that referees should be strict, as they don't want to create a bunch of cheapie PKs. And they can't say "don't call it" if the ball was put in play.
In the CBS studio postgame discussing this, Christina Unkel tried to tell the panel about what we all know, “the art of refereeing”. There’s the laws, and then there’s the “art” of APPLYING the laws. It seems that there are people who want literally every possible situation that could ever occur in a game to have either a law or “guidance” about. There are just things that you can’t have, expect, or need to be written down and you have to let the referee have the power to decide what to do. Also regarding her appearance, I really like how she brought up Pierluigi Collina as “everyone’s all time favorite ref” but how often he used his personality to officiate rather than strictly the laws and no one cared, and also inferred that if this much technology was around during Collina's days, people wouldn't like him nearly as much. But the one thing I wish Christina had done if she wanted to talk about referees discretion was talk about cautions for delaying the restart, dissent, and the old 6 second keeper rule. Would have liked to hear Thierry Henry (who was very sarcastic to Unkel about when to apply laws or not) say if he wanted dissent from players and managers and delaying the restart to be refereed strictly by the LOTG, which would result in many more yellow cards like Kovacs' 12 dissent card game, or if every 6 second possession had been giving IFKs all the time.
Occassionally I can't fathom how entitled some of the super clubs act and how readily they try to deflect from poor performances with inanity like this: https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_...letico-madrid-complaint-uefa-champions-league I thought this was just some silly online debate. The fact that Barca wants to make a capital case out of it is astounding. The cherry on top is this blanket assertion that any penalty would have been a 2CT. Wild stuff. It's like an uniformed U10 rec coach, but instead it's the entire apparatus of a billion-dollar revenue entity.