It’s that time of year: the sun rises later and sets earlier, there’s a slight chill in the air, the blue skies aren’t quite as blue, and sunny days aren’t quite as warm. Election ads are constantly bothering me to register to vote, everyone is picking their favorite transfer rumor, and Premier League players, managers, and pundits are hopping mad about the referees. Every year, like clockwork.
In October 2018 the great controversy – if you remember – was the Lacazette handball against Crystal Palace. On a corner, Lacazette went up to head the ball, was pushed and flailing to keep his balance, struck the ball with his hand. The ball fell to Aubameyang and he scored.
That handball was preceded by Willy Boly scoring a goal against Man City. Replays showed he used his hand.
Roy Hodgson even complained about the handball. He didn’t call for a change of the laws but he did say that it felt unfair: “I can’t say I’ve seen it, but I have now. Most people would feel sympathy for us because it wasn’t exactly a touch of the hand, but one which helped the ball to the player who scored.”
Those handballs weren’t the cause of the rules changes but they did lead to a very public pronouncement that the Premier League wanted to make sure that any handball – any touch of the hand whatsoever in the actions leading to a goal – would be cause to strike off a goal. It’s important to say that this wasn’t in the IFAB rules, this was the Premier League making up rules at the time. And they did exactly that – they instructed officials to chalk off goals if the ball even touched an attacking player’s hand. And we went a whole year and a half with that nonsense.
This is important because up to that point the laws of the game required intent. The laws of the game were incredibly clear at the time: the referee needed to judge intent – did the player intend to handle the ball or was it accidental? And there were a huge number of clues and tricks that referees were told to use to help them judge intent.
Was it ball to hand or hand to ball? Was the ball extremely close to the player when it was struck? Was the arm in an unnatural position? And despite all of that, people complained ceaselessly about handball calls.
And if you’ve played the game, you kinda know when someone is intentionally handling the ball. It’s actually really easy to tell when someone intentionally handles the ball. It’s like an instinctive motion – their arm goes out, and then they pull it back as if they are revolted by their own behavior.
And IFAB, hearing the complaints, changed the laws. Not to simplify them but actually make them more complex and in so doing, hopefully clearer.
And let’s be honest here: they are clearer.
Handling the ball
For the purposes of determining handball offences, the upper boundary of the arm is in line with the bottom of the armpit.
It is an offence if a player:
- deliberately touches the ball with their hand/arm, including moving the hand/arm towards the ball
- scores in the opponents’ goal directly from their hand/arm, even if accidental, including by the goalkeeper
- after the ball has touched their or a team-mate’s hand/arm, even if accidental, immediately:
- scores in the opponents’ goal
- creates a goal-scoring opportunity
- touches the ball with their hand/arm when:
- the hand/arm has made their body unnaturally bigger
- the hand/arm is above/beyond their shoulder level (unless the player deliberately plays the ball which then touches their hand/arm)
The above offences apply even if the ball touches a player’s hand/arm directly from the head or body (including the foot) of another player who is close.
Except for the above offences, it is not an offence if the ball touches a player’s hand/arm:
- directly from the player’s own head or body (including the foot)
- directly from the head or body (including the foot) of another player who is close
- if the hand/arm is close to the body and does not make the body unnaturally bigger
- when a player falls and the hand/arm is between the body and the ground to support the body, but not extended laterally or vertically away from the body
The goalkeeper has the same restrictions on handling the ball as any other player outside the penalty area. If the goalkeeper handles the ball inside their penalty area when not permitted to do so, an indirect free kick is awarded but there is no disciplinary sanction. However, if the offence is playing the ball a second time (with or without the hand/arm) after a restart before it touches another player, the goalkeeper must be sanctioned if the offence stops a promising attack or denies an opponent or the opposing team a goal or an obvious goal-scoring opportunity.
So, what are all the complaints about?
Well, it’s a change and people hate change. But also, VAR makes it easier to call. So what we are seeing are a lot of calls all the sudden because the game is under a microscope and because the laws have been changed.
But here’s a funny thing. The handball law was actually changed in 2019/20, LOL. And I do mean that I am actually laughing out fucking loud. As you – my long suffering reader – know I watch Bundesliga and Serie A. I follow Atalanta with some passing interest (obviously not the same level of love I have for Arsenal) and have watched as the Serie A struggled with these rules changes last year. And slowly they all got over it and learned how to play without putting their arms over their heads on defense – or if they did, they just accepted the fact that it’s a handball.
But up till this season the Premier League actually refused to use the actual laws of the game. And again, I’m fucking laughing out loud here! The Premier League – for whatever reason – instructed the referees to ignore these laws! Referees were able to ignore handball when they felt like it, last season. And what’s happened here is that FIFA and IFAB have instructed the Premier League and the Football Association to follow the fucking laws of the game, loooooool.
Look, as an Arsenal supporter I have felt for a long time that the League has had a massive problem with applying the laws of the game. They seemed to be applied awfully randomly at times. And so, I am fine with these changes.
What we are seeing here this season isn’t that the Premier League suddenly has a problem with arms flying all over the place – they have had this problem all along. What they have done up to now is simply randomly decide when to call it. And that has been hugely frustrating to fans, managers, and pundits for years. People have been complaining about the referees not making/making calls for decades.
And – this is also crucial – complaining about how there was no consistency to the calls.
Well, now there is consistency. If a defender puts his hand above his head and hits the ball, it’s a handball. If the ball strikes an attacker’s arm, it’s handball.
And again I’m laughing out loud here but it’s actually hilarious to me that people are complaining. I mean, I get it. If for example, Tottenham hadn’t been penalized for Eric Dier’s handball, then Newcastle would have been rightly angry! Because that was a handball in 2020 and a handball in 2019 and a handball in 2018. He jumped, his arm was above his head, he struck the ball. It’s a handball. It’s always been a handball.
But what it hasn’t always been is called a handball. Referees have often been reluctant to make calls like this late in the game, or against the home team, etc.
What we saw in Serie A was an increase in penalties awarded last season. In the prior two seasons there were around a 124 or so penalties awarded or about 0.32 penalties per contest: one every three matches. The Premier League average for the last four seasons is a bit lower – not because the players are so much better or because the players are cleaner – but not crazily so, with an average of a penalty every 4 matches or 0.25.
Last season in the Serie A there were 60 handball penalties called and not surprisingly the total number of penalties awarded did increase to 186 or about a penalty every other game. Is this because suddenly players were handling the ball more? No. Referees were just calling the handballs.
Now, maybe this consistency offends you. Fair enough! Maybe you like it or don’t mind so much when a player – maybe your team? – gets away with a close call handball? Fair enough as well! But maybe you also get a little upset when these aren’t called? Or maybe you get upset when a referee calls a handball on you but doesn’t call it in another game (or sometimes the same game!)? The trick here is consistency. I think we all want consistency. And what IFAB has done is made a law that was squishy and easy to be inconsistent with a lot easier to call.
So, we are seeing a lot of handballs.
Actually we are seeing a lot of handballs called. Ones that wouldn’t have been called before. Or maybe would have been called, sometimes.
But it’s not the end of the world! In the Serie A, players adjusted, they learned to jump for aerial duels differently, they learned not to mark players so tightly when they got around them, they learned that shouldering a player in the box was going to be called.
And you know what’s happened? In the Serie A penalties are back down to normal 0.31 per contest so far this season! In Ligue Un it’s a bit higher, 0.38; in Bundesliga 0.38; and La Liga 0.33. Calls are fairer, more evenly applied. Players have adjusted. Coaches have adjusted. Fans have adjusted.
I hate to break it to you but all the “GAME’S GONE MATE!!!” outbursts by Jamie Carragher on Sky Sports and teary-eyed Steve Bruce soliloquies aren’t going to change this. IFAB isn’t changing the laws of the game. Every other league has been playing football this way for a year and after a year have adjusted – this has been a change for the good.
Exactly. In my opinion, it was bloody deliberate too, even with his back to play. He knew what he was doing.
Yes!! I thought I was the only one who thought this.
Interestingly, the laws do state that the referee has some discretion if the ball comes off the head of another player who is close or if the defender has his back turned. So, I think the ref could have decided not to award a penalty but must have decided the handball was deliberate.
When I did my ref’s badge, albeit many moons ago, the key phrase was “seeking to gain an advantage”. Never a bad principle to work to, as you can always tell and people somehow can see that that feels “fair”. That’s obviously gone out the window. The current rules don’t “feel fair” in any shape or form, even though that is what they were obviously designed to do. There is a palpable lack of “common sense.” I wouldn’t even feel comfortable if Arsenal got the benefit of a penalty in those circumstances.
I’m sure if you were an FA committee member back in the 1800s and had sat down to write the laws of Association Football, one of the subjects for discussion would have been stopping players from handling the ball, for the obvious reason that players could gain an advantage, ie cheat. Of course that was over 150 years ago, but I don’t see that that principle should be any different now. So the ball hits the hand and the player isn’t even aware of it, or he can’t possibly get out of the way, or he’s been pushed by an opponent. How does that reflect why the law was decided upon in the first place? In an attempt to make things simpler, the new regs have just made everything more complex, if anything. What upsets players and managers isn’t because “they are not used to it”, they just don’t see that it is a fair representation of what the game is all about.
Great article Tim. Jermaine Jena went on Motd and said that England has been successful doing it’s own thing and should simply refuse to play by the same rules as anyone else.
It is exactly this consistency in applying the rules that bothers the media. Best thing FIFA (via Wenger?) have done.
Jenas*
Its*
😕
Even Steve Bruce thought it was harsh, funnily enough. I think Tim’s right it’s the change that’s making people lose their minds especially coupled with the frustration of delaying the game using VAR. It’s just too much for them to take.
I remember a couple of years back when PSG got penalised similarly with a last minute pen against Man U in the CL. I bet no English pundit had a problem then. It’s time the PL caught up. They’ll get used to it.
Interesting read and take amidst a sea of complaints. Thanks for that.
One of my favorite moments of watching my son’s soccer games last year was when one of his teammates–playing as a forward–reacted to a cross by instinctively leaping up and acrobatically catching the ball. Turns out he also plays a lot of American football as wide receiver! Anyway, all of us, coaches, parents from both teams, the ref, etc. had a really good chuckle and the foul was given.
Not sure this little story has a point, really. I just always kind of loved that moment both because of the absurdity of it, and the way it sort of reminded us that, after all, a game (for all its rules, competitiveness, etc.) need not be joyless.
Just learned some new/important information:
1. the handball law does NOT remove intent. It’s actually clarifying and giving guidance to help referees decide intent.
2. the new law actually could have been used to rule OUT the Dier handball and the other three that happened this weekend because it allows the officials to rule out handball for headers/passes from close range/with the defender’s back turned
3. the problem.. the real problem is that the stupid ass Premier League is telling the referees that any hand contact is a handball. LOL. as always the real problem is PGMOL.
This is it! The laws are being applied differently in the premier league. I don’t understand why Carragher and other pundits are calling out FIFA. It’s the FA and/or PGMOL. Another funny thing is, one of the pundits complaining now about these new handball rule wanted it because, I think, it’s easier for the referees to be biased – a ref could see “no intent” even when there is one. Whatever it is the law is, I just want consistency. Even if it means 1 PK every game.
I know basketball is a different sport entirely but I’d like to ask, does the ball touching the leg of a player always a foul? Or there’s the “intent” or “no intent” thing?
I played most of my career at centre half, which involved jumping around in the penalty area a lot of the time. I can categorically say that it is physically impossible to jump without using your arms. Don’t believe me? Try this experiment in your living room. Hold your arms firmly by your sides and then try and get off the ground. If you can get 3 inches upwards you’re doing well.
So we have a scenario in the penalty area where players are swinging their arms about in “unnatural positions” due to the simple mechanics of getting up in the air to challenge for the ball. Nothing sinister, that’s just how it is. With that in mind, it would be quite remarkable if the ball did NOT hit somebody’d arm.
So we most likely have rule makers, whose only experience of “jumping” involves getting off the sofa to make a cup of tea.
1. It clearly DOES remove intent. But it’s not consistent.
The law specifically states that accidental handballs are handballs, if they lead directly to a goal or goal-scoring opportunity: i.e. intent is irrelevant.
But in all other situations an accidental handball (directly off your own head / foot / body, directly off another close player, if your arms are close to body) is not a handball: i.e. intent is relevant.
I think this is inconsistent but probably OK. The law seeks to ensure that no team gets a goalscoring advantage from a handball, accidental or deliberate, and clearly removes intent from those circumstances, but ONLY those circumstances.
2. BUT. I agree that there’s no mandate from the law as it stands for referees to call fouls for accidental defensive handballs, unless your arms are sticking out/up (i.e. it could be intentional). But to my memory this has been the law (or its interpretation) for ages. So in theory the law should NOT lead to any increase in handball pens, in ANY league. So what’s actually going on? It can’t just be PGMOL.
And your well-argued post notwithstanding, I think whatever is going on clearly is a problem. The way the law is being refereed right now, teams who are short on attacking ideas or skill can just blast balls at defenders or into crowded boxes at elbow height. It’s crappy football, and it leads to manifestly unfair outcomes.
3. I am 100% behind you that most of the bleating from players, pundits and managers at best misses the point (the current problem with too many handball penalties is not the law, it’s the refereeing), and at worst is sentimental and hypocritical rubbish (we said we just wanted consistency, now that we have it we’ve changed our minds, meanwhile WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN).
But we don’t just ask for consistency actually, we also ask for fairness. Fairness matters because for a game of skill to be at all meaningful, outcomes should as closely as possible reflect the quality of the play. Introducing penalties / offences for accidental outcomes may be necessary but deviates from that goal.
“The law specifically states that accidental handballs are handballs, if they lead directly to a goal or goal-scoring opportunity: i.e. intent is irrelevant.”
To clarify – accidental handballs by the attacking team are offences if they lead directly to a goal or goal-scoring opportunity.
So let me see if I’ve fully understood this and correct me if I’m wrong. If you’re in the centre circle and the ball accidentally hits your arm, it’s no foul? Nothing given? The exact same offence in the penalty area and it’s a pen, which is potentially a game changing event and will often affect the whole outcome of the match. How does that make the slightest bit of sense? Who in UEFA sat down and thought that might be a good logical outcome? I must be missing something. Not sure if it was a UEFA decision in the first place, but suffice to say they are a discredited organisation, who wouldn’t understand “fair play” if it came along and smacked them in the mouth. Witness their line on racism.
I don’t if anyone has noticed but Sadio Mané is a pretty good footballer. Just saying…
He’s awesome.
And an all-round good human being. Ask any Senegalese.
Who should’ve seen a red card for his intentional elbow on Tierney.
Maybe the ref thought it was his arm above the t-shirt line…
Quite right Tom. A stone cold sending off. A deliberate and premeditated elbow in the face. A red card every time. The ref bottled it, which often happens at Anfield, but there was no-one in the crowd! That must be a first. We then had the ridiculous pantomime where he indicated that it was an innocent shoulder charge. A great player, but he shouldn’t have been on the pitch. Went right down in my estimation. A cheat.
One of The BBC FiveLive pundits (can’t remember which one) actually said that he thought Tierney ran into Mané’s arm.
Don’t agree with this. Mane went for a big shoulder to shoulder, it never came because Tierney stepped off, the elbow hit Tierney somewhere in the shoulder/chest/collarbone and his forearm flicked him in the face. I thought yellow was about right.
Sorry Greg but that’s a shocking interpretation of what took place.
By your account of what happened Mane was treated harshly to receive a yellow.
I was more disappointed with Arsenal players than the ref, for not getting in Mane’s face after one of their own was stricken in such manner.
Total lack of character.
Well I think Mane steps across and throws up his arm to hold Tierney off, but Tierney had already pulled out. It wasn’t a deliberate elbow to the face, the elbow hits Tierney in the shoulder, but it deserved a yellow because the arm was high, and it was over-agressive.
If the rest of the Arsenal players had thought it was deliberate they would have been straight over there.
But we can agree to disagree.
Tom, I’ll leave this here – you are not reading what I am writing. I am not accusing Tierney of play-acting. Mane’s arm hit him in the face (not Mane’s elbow). It was a foul, it was aggressive, it was potentially dangerous. It deserved a yellow. But in my view – and you can disagree – Mane was not intentionally trying to elbow Tierney in the face.
I have seen many intentional elbows, I have been on the receiving end of a couple and decked someone once in a game in retaliation, getting sent off myself. I hate them.
Sol Campbell got sent off against Man U once for aggressively handing off a defender who wasn’t quite there and accidentally elbowing him in the face. I put Mane’s foul in the same ballpark. Reckless and potentially dangerous. I thought Sol should have got a yellow, but I’m sure all the United fans thought he should go to jail for murder.
Greg, you’ve twisted yourself in all kinds of knots on this one.
Let me simplify it for you without sounding condescending.
Mane was amped up for this game probably because Klopp gave them a few choice words about losing two in a row to a weaker opponent.
His challenge on Bellerin was a yellow but since it happened in the first minute and Arsenal regained possession, the ref let it go.
I don’t usually put stock in majority opinion but in this case everyone else saw Mane plant his elbow into Tierney’s neck except you. The usual explanation/excuses of players hight difference don’t apply here and no matter the camera angle Mane is seen swinging his elbow into Arsenal player.
As for your assertion Arsenal players would’ve reacted strongly had they thought it was foul play…….please, when have they ever?
The only one with any real back bone is Guendouzi and he’s out.
Greg, tell me the one about the 3 bears. I liked the bit where they ate all the porridge.
Greg, I hope you realize you’ve just accused Tierney of play acting by holding his neck and face and remaining on the ground for what seemed like minutes.
Maybe, I don’t know anything about Mane the person, he’s a great player no doubt, but pointing to his shoulder and wagging his finger after clearly having elbowed Tierney makes him a massive di#k in my book.
Or maybe he’s just a superior competitor who likes to “let them know he’ll be there all night”. He did leave a calling card on Bellerin’s back side within 60 seconds of the kick off.
Well, by those rules, Jota should have been called, as it sure looked like it brushed his arm, and he immediately scored. If it did touch the arm, makes a lot more sense than the call against Dier. Who didn’t really strike the ball, it struck him.
Honestly removing some level of intent is stupid. It encourages attackers to blast the ball at defenders in hopes of getting a call that the defender can do little or nothing about.
I see a lot of praise for Arsenal in the media and on the blogs but I thought were disappointing. It borders on patronising, “at least we didn’t get massacred”.
It’s Liverpool at Anfield, it’s the toughest game out there, but we just beat them twice and if you deserve to play there you have to have some audacity and self-belief.
We looked a step off the pace, both in the legs and in the head. Ceballos the only player who really acquitted himself, maybe Holding. Everyone else put in a lot of work but struggled. Auba was peripheral – I love him, but for all his quality, if we can’t release him in behind then honestly what’s the point of having him on the pitch?
On a side note, I genuinely love how this blog’s “Related articles” algorithm is so weird, it’s like a window back in time to completely unrelated articles.
Thought I was the only one who saw that.
There was no VAR delay either to review. What might have been the harm?
Then again, on our ‘NBC Peac*ck’ broadcast in the US we viewers can’t even rewind a live event. Last I checked I’m paying for a service that emulates ’70s TV.
*replying to SLCGooner