In response to a previous post (on Graham Poll), dearieme made a bloody good point:
Why is it that, in football arguments, no-one ever cites the bloody rule? Please, put me out of my misery, show us the rule (as it then stood).
It's been in the back of my mind throughout subsequent arguments, as I suppose the emergent, commons-based nature of the beautiful game blinds us to the codified statutes that do exist. Still, one has the right to moan about refereeing, but should do so from a position of knowledge of the laws of the game. This is a point made by Keith Hackett, in The Observer:
Match officials do know the laws and apply them to the best of their ability - but time and again pundits criticise perfectly valid decisions. The Match of the Day analysis of the Aliadière decision was a case in point. They suggested the goal should not have been given, that the striker should have been flagged for 'gaining an advantage' after being in an offside position from the long ball. That is simply wrong.
He also provides a digestible overview of the current offside law:
If a player ticks any one of those three boxes, he is offside. The three-part definition is remembered as 'PIG' - if a player doesn't Play, Interfere or Gain, he is fine.
To help ground debates on refereeing in the laws of the game, take a look at the FA website, or alternatively download the actual laws (.pdf). They still leave room for debate. There's still an issue of rules vs. discretion. But reference to the rules should be a minimum expectation we place on so-called "pundits".
I'm constantly amazed by some pundits' (and so usually ex-players') lack of knowledge of the rules. Time and again you hear comments such as "that should have been a free-kick for handball even though I don't believe it was deliberate" or "yes it was a foul, but it shouldn't have been a penalty because the ball was going out" or suchlike.
A good case in point was the City-Liverpool game at the weekend. Benayoun is fouled in the box, at which point I closed my eyes, put my head in my hands and waited for the inevitable. But when I don't hear a whistle and look up I see Benayoun still on his feet and trying to get a futile cross in. All the talk afterwards was about how it would have been a penalty if he'd gone down. While I think that may have made a penalty award more likely, no one mentioned that it should have been a penalty anyway; that a foul is a foul and it doesn't rely on the forward going to ground to mean there has been an infringement.
Then again, Adebayor had already been denied a blatant penalty, so perhaps it was part of that aforementioned discretionary evening-up...
Posted by: Quinn | February 24, 2010 at 04:28 PM
I didn't see that incident, but my pet hate is when a player goes through, has a shot on goal, misses, as a defender slides in and takes his legs out. It's almost as if provided he get's a shot on you can do what you want. I don't see why penalties are only given if the foul occurs before making contact with the ball, because anywhere else on the pitch it's a free kick.
Posted by: aje | February 24, 2010 at 04:51 PM