Nobody knows what a handball is anymore. When talking about refereeing, whether it's in the NWSL or the Premier League or World Cup, men's or women's, I've been inclined to despair that anything constructive can be said about handballs.But I've been encouraged by the Tiki-Taka/Tactics thread, by the many good contributions to it, to think maybe there's a way to approach the handball shambles if we break it into manageable parts rather than tackle it as the one big huge mess it is. Importantly, I think we can differentiate between handball calls which are a priority to focus on and which are less so, even if they all seem important when they happen, judging from the non-stop screaming. *** What are different types of handball situations? How do we divide them up? As we go along, no doubt we'll identify more types, but we need someplace to start. the situation I call the Support-Arm Fallacy, handballs resulting from defenders going to ground in the penalty area the arms in a "natural position" in the penalty area deflections off nearby players deflections off the same player balls which hit arms held by the side or put behind the back armblocks in front of the body handballs from arms/hands knocked into path of ball by an opposing players (recent example, Arsenal vs Wolfsburg, 2nd leg Champions League semi-final) miscellaneous handballs I'm going to begin with the following tentative points as a starting hypothesis — which doesn't mean we're going to end up there, nor does it mean everyone's going to agree it's a good starting point — Questions where deflections are involved are, in general, too messy and difficult to try to solve or reach a useful and constructive consensus the Support-Arm Fallacy (as I call it) is one of the worst betrayals of the Spirit of the Game and fighting it is a high priority, as is the "natural arm position" fallacy Controversies surrounding handball appeals when a player has their arms held against their side (or put behind their back) are of a lower priority, as are controversies where a player's arm or hand gets pushed into the ball by an opponent Here's an example of the Support-Arm Fallacy, a "save" by West Ham's Tomas Soucek in West Ham vs Chelsea at 9.24 of the highlight video. This is (choose one: not/ no longer / "never") a handball A type of handball situation which I will use as an example of one of lower priority to get right is shown by the recent Women's Champions League semifinal (2nd leg) between Arsenal and Wolfsburg, where the VAR called for a penalty review when Arsenal's Wubben-Moy had her arm knocked into the path of the ball by a Wolfsburg player. As absurd as I think it is to call a penalty for this, I also think it's a lower priority to get this type of call correct. There are several reasons for this but one is simply because it happens so rarely, at least in the penalty area or in other critical moments. On-field review at 1'00 of the video highlights *** Secondary themes will emerge from a discussion of handballs. Like Who's to Blame? What's the role of the governing bodies, the referees, the players, coaches, journalists, fans? *** No doubt, the conversation will veer in various directions on various handball thingies, but hopefully we'll come back again and again to an attempt to find methodical ways of talking about handballs and the usefulness (or not) of breaking them into groups or categories.
I have a general observation, which applies to those who enact and revise the Rules of the Game, if you think about them as a governing body: Based on my personal experience over many years working within and in relationship to governments, any government rules are pretty crude instruments. Governing rules do not do well with nuance. When they try to have nuances, the interpretations and applications require case-specific judgments by those responsible for implementing the rules, who have different interpretations and personal preferences from one person to the next. So, if you want nuance, you are going to get inconsistencies. In other words, you have a crude blunt instrument or inconsistencies in application. The older I get, the more convinced I am that this is the case. So, with hand balls, which do you want. Back when I first starrted playing soccer, I was taught that any ball touching the hand was a hand ball. That was a blunt crude rule, but I thought it worked well and there were very few hand balls. Nowadays, we get into: But that is not fair, she did not intend to touch it with her hand, etc., etc., etc. There is no end to that, as we can see from your posts on the subject. It is sort of like a player in tennis: But it is not fair for me to lose the point, I did not intend to touch the net with my racquet -- so that now, we have to know what the player initended inside his or her head, which of course it is not possible to be absolutely certain about. So, from my point of view, make your choice: Have rules for particular refined situations that, of necessity, are going to involve individual referee interpretations and subjective judgments (what did he or she intend) or have a simple crude, blunt rule that everyone understands and can be applied based on observable facts. If you do not want to go the blunt, crude route, then get used to it: There are going to be some calls made where you would have called it differently and where two world class referees likewise might have called it differently from each other -- and neither can be said definitively to be right or wrong.
IFAB says in Law 12 : "It is an offence if a player: * deliberately touches the ball with their hand/arm, for example moving the hand/arm towards the ball * touches the ball with their hand/arm when it has made their body unnaturally bigger. A player is considered to have made their body unnaturally bigger when the position of their hand/arm is not a consequence of, or justifiable by, the player’s body movement for that specific situation. By having their hand/arm in such a position, the player takes a risk of their hand/arm being hit by the ball and being penalised * scores in the opponents’ goal: -directly from their hand/arm, even if accidental, including by the goalkeeper - immediately after the ball has touched their hand/arm, even if accidental" It is the second * where most of the complaints occur. I tend to agree with @cpthomas - keep it simple. IMO - to improve the application of the the law and minimize complaints: a) eliminate the concept of "natural" ; b) say that if the arm and/or a hand is positioned away from the frame of the body, the arm/hand contact by the ball is an offense [without regard to the reason the arm is there], and c) If in the judgment of the referee a hand ball within the frame of the body is a deliberate play on the ball, that would be an offense. [The law would have to prevent a player who is recieving a pass in the air from knocking the ball down with a hand or hands situated within the frame of the body.] So all those natural position and 'couldn't possibly have moved her arm away' arguments go away. As Tommy Lee Jones said to Harrison Ford in The Fugitive: "I don't care."]. Ball hits arm away from the body - hand ball. So under my law Tobin Heath would have had a hand ball in the box in the 2012 Olympics game vs. Canada - IMO she should have been called even under the law enforcement at the time; and I wouid be OK with that. To answer your questions, a) That is a handball all day long. This EPL player watched the ball into his arm just like you teach a kid to watch a baseball into their glove to make a catch. At the time of contact the hand had not yet hit the ground, which could have arguably made it a support arm - it was not. This EPL player could have tried to avoid the arm-ball contact as he fell - the fall was neither sudden nor violent. b) I already agreed that Wubben-Moy's arm was bumped into the ball and at the time of contact her arm with close to her body - no handball. -CJ
I do like this reference. I even like to picture it in my mind, with Tommy Lee Jones's voice, while they're standing in that sort of sewer pipe. Honestly: if there is an hand ball that should have been called under any kind of law enforcement, it's the one in the final of that same 2012 Olympcs. Looks like USWNT were getting away with a lot of hand balls at that event. As a Nadeshiko Japan's fan, I still feel robbed by that call after more than 10 years from it and I assume that, if VAR had been a thing back in the day, any reasonable review would have given a PK to Japan.
Good comments by @cpthomas and @CoachJon about the wording in the Laws of the Game and the changes to them. I think you're ahead of me on that. One thing which has occurred to me is that if we have more specific (rather than general) language, we need to make a distinction with defenders who either slide to block, intercept, or deflect a shot or pass — or otherwise lower their bodies such as going to their knees. Giving them the protection of a "natural arm position" in those cases is just asking for trouble. I'll have to find that Tobin Heath handball from the 2012 Olympics! I only vaguely recall it (I remember more clearly the offside call against Japan when it seemed they had gotten a player on a clean breakaway) I suspect @blissett has good cause to retain bitter memories of it *** There was a handball call today in the OL Reign / Houston game which resulted in nullifying a goal for OL Reign. I don't think it's terribly interesting for the purposes of the thread, but here, near the start of the thread, it may be useful to say why I don't think it needs to command a lot of our attention. 1655037942115745792 is not a valid tweet id We can add to our "Categories" of handball situations with "upper-arm/ close to shoulder" handballs. Like Bella Munson, I'm surprised the goal was nullified, but I don't claim to have the best eyes (maybe the ball made contact with Huitema's hand or forearm after going off her upper arm/ shoulder?) So I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to the trained officials... unless of course it seems a lot of people are screaming the refs were blind. But then it's just a plain mistake. Referees are human, even though with video review you'd think they could get this right. (The on-field call was goal, I believe, meaning VAR had to think it was a clear and obvious error). I am a loud critic and skeptic of VAR as a whole. But I'm not a total Luddite and if VAR seemed likely to help anywhere, it was on handball calls — did the ball go off the hand or arm rather than the body? This is a case where either VAR just plain goofed or the various camera angles and slo-mo show something I'm missing. But it's perplexing how VAR introduces ever more obscure questions of perception such as the video review shared by PRO (Professional Referees Organization) on the handball incident between North Carolina and Orlando , on an attempted pass by Kerolin in the box in their Challenge Cup match a couple weeks ago. At 0'19 of the YouTube video That the ball hits the defender's arm is not in question but here goes the "support-arm" exemption again. Instead, we get a long review over whether there was a secondary arm contact with the ball and whether that was deliberate, whether the defender looking at the ball indicates a deliberate intent to stop the ball This is Kafkaesque. From a simple question of whether it hits a player's arm — which you don't even need VAR for here but which VAR can easily prove if someone missed it — we've condemned ourselves to an obscure process to establish a nebulous truth — and either exonerate an accused or determine a fitting punishment — by remote bureaucrats operating by arcane rules and procedures. This is madness
If you follow the simple rule that if there is hand (or arm below the shoulder) contact with the ball, it is a hand ball, then it seems to me all of the above cases are simple. They all are hand balls. (In the first case, I see the ball as coming off the upper arm, not just the shoulder.) What would be so difficult about that as the rule? No delays, clear and simple. If there is VAR, then the only question is whether there actually was contact and, in the first case, whether the contact was excusively with the shoulder or also with the upper arm.
It'll be interesting to test your suggestion ("keep it simple") as we go along. The rule certainly works for the examples I've given so far, which are to me some of the most blatant examples where a "handball should simply be called a handball" But what about deflections where the direction of the ball winds up headed nowhere near the goal? Or cases where a defender puts their hands behind their back but the ball still strikes their arm which is held close by their side? I'd like to keep it (the rules) as simple as possible, too, but I think we have to worry about attackers simply kicking the ball, aiming at an arm to get a "cheapo", a cheap penalty. I think IFAB and the other governing bodies have some legitimate concerns about that.
What are we doing here? Handball not called near end of 1st half in West Ham vs Manchester United in a Premier League game today. Which category does it go in?! This may deserve its own(!) but it shares this with what I call the forearm block in front of the body in that (I suppose) the rationalization for not calling it a handball is that the arm, by being in front of the body, isn't making the player (i.e. his or her silhouette) "bigger". What about @cpthomas and his proposed "keep it simple" rule? It certainly works OK here; ball hits arm (or player uses arm to play the ball)= handball offense (what does it matter that the player isn't "bigger"?)
Although I somehow agree with @cpthomas about the fact that a simple rule, with no exceptions, would make it possible to exactly determine if an action has an hand ball infraction in it or not (and we all know how @cpthomas likes things that are exactly measurable: he literally has it in his signature ), I guess there is anyway a reason for the current complications of the rule, and that's what @kolabear mentioned: should the rule be that "if there is hand (or arm below the shoulder) contact with the ball, it is a hand ball", what could prevent teams to make it an open and explicit strategy to enter the box and aim at a DF's arm instead of aiming at the goal? It would be arguably easier to do that than actually scoring. You could say: "We can live with it", but do you really mean it? Do we actually want to see something of the kind?
In addition to categories of types of handball or handball situations, it will be useful to be methodical about how we think about or make decisions about handball calls, to identify recurring themes or motifs in how we analyze or discuss the decisions referees face. For example, the desire to be consistent. This is the big justification for the "Support-Arm" exemption. It allows different referees in different games — in different leagues even — to make a nice, simple "objective" decision. Hardly even a decision, just an observation, one which is readily verified by VAR. If it's a support arm — and as long as the defender doesn't reach out in "the direction of the ball" (no doubt interpreted to mean "in the direction of the shooter, or in the direction where the ball originated from" — then No Penalty. Monkey sees Support Arm, Monkey says Support Arm. Of course, one of the great Golden Rules of Consistency in soccer is that calls should be consistent wherever they take place on the pitch. "If it's a foul at midfield, it's a foul in the penalty box" And vice-versa. I think we can legitimately inquire whether these "support-arm" handballs are called (or not called) the same way in midfield. Tradition, too, plays a big part. We expect to see the game called today, the way it was last year — consistency over time or over history — unless of course there were compelling and clearly explained reasons for changing the rules. We have to have a good reason to contradict the old-timer who says, "Never a red" over his pint of ale. "Never a red" "Never a penalty" And of course the all-time classic, "Game is gone" By no means are these the only methodical themes or motifs to apply in thinking about referee decisions. Part of my intention in starting this thread is to determine or discover other thematic ways of thinking about handball decisions. (One of my favorites is the 5-Year-Old Test, as in "explain it to me like I'm five years old") **** It's important for some of us to try to understand the crisis facing the sport — in both the men's game and the women's — because the journalists sure don't, just another of the Limitations of WoSo Journo. The Women's World Cup is going to take place in a couple months; millions of casual fans are going to tune in and they are going to see things that Earthlings can scarcely believe. Like attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... And C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate They're going to see handballs they can't believe... and they're not going to be called for penalties. Unless they're prepared for it, unless they're shown by journalists or experts on TV that it's a problem at the highest level of the men's game, many casual fans are going to see it as a reason to just not take women's soccer seriously The moderator in the Referee Forum just said this today in the UEFA thread: Of course, he was thinking mainly of the men's World Cup. Comrades, we have to wonder whether the Women's World Cup will be so lucky
If it's a foul at midfield, it's a foul in the penalty area. And vice-versa And if it's not a foul in midfield, it's not a foul in the penalty area. And vice-versa Well, let's take a couple of our handball examples and ask, are we calling them the same way in midfield as we do in the box? The "save" by West Ham's Tomas Soucek in West Ham vs Chelsea at 9.24 of the highlight video. From the Challenge Cup match on April 19 between Orlando and North Carolina, Kerolin's attack is stopped in the box by the arm of Orlando's Tori Hansen At 1'36 of the highlight video At midfield, the correct call is going to be "play on"?!!! If the attacker tries to spring a teammate free with a pass, or if she or he tries to dribble around a defender and find a passing lane to a teammate, a defender is going to be able to stop the attack with their arms like this? And if, as a result of deflecting the ball, the defender or one of his or her teammates begins a counter-attack the other way which results in a goal, that goal is going to stand?!!! Of course, if it happens at midfield, the referee can blow the whistle, call a handball, AND VAR HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. It's not in the box (potential or called PK), it's not a potential red card, and if the ref stops the play before a counter-attack results in a goal, there's no build-up to a goal for VAR to review. I'm not, for the moment, going into a deep discussion (I'm always too wordy anyway). I'm not saying a discussion isn't there to be had, but I'm going to leave it at this — there seems to be a serious disconnect between calling it the same way at midfield as it is in the box, no?! *** I know this is a peculiar thread at the moment. It seems theoretical, rather than triggered by one big incident in a big game which everyone naturally gets excited about. It's mainly me talking and I'm sure most others aren't sure what to leap in and say. For now. But by laying out a more methodical framework to discuss handballs, the idea (hopefully) is we'll be able to discuss handball controversies in a better way when they come up. Or when I turn my attention to the question of who to blame for things being the shambles they are. Because I"m not going to be shy about making accusations... (tee-hee!)
After sitting through the youtube video from PRO - NWSL #4, my gut reaction was this takes WAY too long. They should have a clock with an alarm. If the video assitant referee can't figure out "it was" or "it wasn't" within X seconds, then it must be too close to overturn any call on the field. Alarm goes off and you can't keep rewinding at 25%, frame by frame, stop action, etc. Common sense says that if you have to look at it more than twice, the situation is fuzzy and in the interest of the game: Play On. The WAY-Too-Long part is what will sour new fans who watch the 2023 World Cup, as @kolabear fears. In older days, the ref courses used to say the assistant referee was there to assist not to insist. That thought should extend to the video assistant referee. One more thought about something @kolabear said. Of course with VAR, the standards being applied in and adjacent to the penalty area are different than at midfield because the stakes are higher there. Sadly, the concepts of 'nothing there' or 'trifling' can be applied at midfield but not near/in the penalty area, anymore. At midfield we want the game to continue to flow, however because many people think the stakes are so high near the goal, to choke the life out of the game with video review To Get It Right is worthwhile doing.
An observation: The reason we have VAR is because of a preoccupation with life being FAIR -- even though, of course, it fundamentally isn’t (unless you believe in karma). Further, that in particular is a preoccupation of the mass media and of fans on the receiving end of what they perceive to be unfairness. With the advent of TV replay technology, that preoccupation is magnified, and VAR was developed on the theory it is important to minimize unfairness. A simpler and possibly better response than VAR would simply be to tell fans, GET OVER IT!
So, as most of you probably have heard, there was a bit of a controversy at the end of last night's game between Angel City and Washington Spirit, when Washington was given a penalty for a handball in the box At 7'11 of the highlight video 1. As I implied at the start of this thread, handballs involving deflections are not a top priority when it comes to fixing the handball mess because these are inherently tricky situations 2. The most important handball questions to solve are whatever the latest ones are — at least in terms of big games or when they decide a game around the 90th minute 3. Judging from the referee's statement, the issue here, as I suspected, involves whether the defender kept her arm rigid or not. If she had held her arm rigid, rather than letting it fly up over above her shoulders, probably the referee would've seen less reason to call a penalty. This happens to be different, apparently, from the norms in Europe, where a rigid arm is sign of intent to use the arm while an arm "ohne Spannung", without tension, is evidence of lack of intent 4. Many of you have probably noticed that I'm in favor of defenders putting their arms behind their back to avoid handling the ball. But IFAB, FIFA, and the other Poobahs of the soccer world have been trying to move away from compelling or encouraging players from having to do that in favor of the "natural arm position" standard. (I couldn't find some post from the Ref Forum about this) (Damnations I also couldn't find the post when one of us pointed out the "arms-behind-the-back" is clearly unnatural) 5. Nobody knows what a handball is anymore 6. This is becoming Kafkaesque. When neither players nor fans can know what the laws are that they're supposed to follow, but only some appointed Guardians of the Law, who remove their decision-making upstairs to hidden attics where they decide the happiness and fate of others by choosing which obscure clauses and sub-clauses of the law to apply
I thought that was such a soft PK. It had no effect on the play. She had blocked the shot with her body. The ball would have done the same up/down in the same spot whether it hit her arm or not.
It's probably because there are too many threads here that are basically about the same subject. It was @CoachJon, in a comment that he posted just yesterday on the "VAR in NWSL/preview on the Ref forum" thread:
I thought the ball struck body first. Felt VAR should have overturned the decision immediately on seeing that.
From the Ref Forum — Big handball decision in a game between Luton Town and Sunderland, which will help determine who gets promoted to the Premier League from Division Two, which naturally isn't called Division Two but the Championship League, with Division Two being reserved for Division Three (all perfectly logical) The referee, Simon Hooper, did not call this a penalty for a handball The moderator frames the discussion rather well. Most referees will think great call "But what does football want?" *** I have framed this question in terms of the question, Who is the Game For? Is it for the referees? Or is it for the fans? (At least after the players) Referees are a part of the game and fans can learn a lot from them about their decision-making, but when there is a huge disconnect between referees and fans (and I don't know for sure if there is one here), we need to see sometimes these are fundamentally questions about teh Spirit of the Game. And when it's about the Spirit of the GAme, are the opinions of fans intrinsically less important than that of referees? Who is the game for? It didn't go over so well in the Ref Forum. But it's really not much different than what the moderator is asking there now. *** This call fits in the category I described above as the "natural-arm position", where the referees and the Poobahs of the sport have decided they don't want nor expect defenders to put their arms behind their back. I may be persuaded to change my mind, but going into this thread, this is to me a clear penalty and it's outrageous that refs are now trained to see it otherwise, that this is a legitimate defensive play. No wonder the Angel City defender (M.A Vignola) gets upset for being called for a handball in the 90th minute against Washington last weekend when this, this, is not a handball. It's Kafkaesque.
TLDR: We should expect calls to be made differently in different leagues and by different referee pools. Every game, referees spend 90+ minutes interpreting and applying the Laws in real time with real players, not sitting at a keyboard watching video or discussing hypotheticals. I can see how the real-time in-the-game interpretation of the dictums from IFAB would naturally evolve differently federation to federation league to league and referee pool to referee pool. For me this means the way things are called in the English Premier League, French Ligue 1, German Bundesliga, US MLS, and NWSL will not likely be consistent with each other. This includes pretty much the whole book: how much dissent is allowed, yellow and red card offenses, what constitutes advantage, etc., and of course handballs. The main example I can think of comes from major league baseball. [Disclaimer: I have no idea how baseball works in 2023.] In days of yore, there were no playoffs, no designated hitter, the bases were smaller (IYKYK), the mound was higher, and American League teams only played National League teams in the World Series. Each league had its own pool of umpires. Both leagues operated from the same rule book. However, it was well known that the strike zone was lower in the National League than in the American League. The rule both leagues followed to define the 3-dimensional strike zone was: the width and depth of home plate and the height located between the batter’s armpits and top of knees (1950-1962). National league strikes were called in the zone below the knees to a little above the belly button, while American League strikes were called in the zone from the top of knees to just above the armpits. Same rule book, but different real-game applications within separate leagues and umpire pools. We think we want soccer/football to be called the same way in leagues in different countries and in the men’s game compared to the women’s game. However, as humans we should recognize that variations are inevitable, particularly without a lot of cross-pollination**. I believe most fans want to have the game called the same way within each league they follow. Fans can live with variations league to league. So onward through the fog, and let's solve this NWSL handball problem. ** Why in the world is this word not spelled: "pollenation"? -CJ
Because pollen is actually a latin word, pollen, pollinis, and this kind of neutral-gender names of the III declination have the -e- only at the nominative case (semen, seminis; nomen, nominis and so on), probably because of a characteristic change of the vowel-sound that's called apophonia (I guess the concept is similar to ablaut in the anglo-saxon languages). So the related verbs (and the subsequent de-verbal names with the -tion suffix) always have -i- and not -e- (semen, but insemination; nomen, but nomination, and so on). I always wonder how many English speakers are aware of the gazillion words of their language that derive from Latin.
Dale Johnson (ESPN FC) put out a series of tweets (AND POLLS!!) on offside calls prompted by a called-back goal in Liverpool vs Aston Villa yesterday. It's a bit like what I'm trying to do in this handball thread — lay out a series of illustrative examples for us to think about. I first noticed it in a tweet by the German Twitter account Collinas Erben 1661058052483694609 is not a valid tweet id The play in question from Liverpool vs Aston Villa is at 4'50 of the highlights video And Dale Johnson's tweet thread begins here -> 1660938397823688705 is not a valid tweet id It's interesting. We don't need to go into it in depth here (and it it would be a digression from the handball discussion), but I thought the parallel is interesting between what Dale Johnson is doing and what we're doing here. (What we're doing here is better, though, because we're not just regurgitating the official Party Line from referees. Also because we wind up in learned discussions on Latin, tee-hee!)
Big VAR handball call erases Gotham goal on a diving header by Yazmeen Ryan which would've put them up 2-0. Instead, Washington Spirit levels a little later 1662950854587195392 is not a valid tweet id