The Rules Of Football

I recently watched a re-run of ‘The Big Match’ – football highlights from the archives. In one game Alan Ball was caught offside and must have had a few choice words to say to the lino. The ref called him over, told him to apologise to the linesman, which he did, and the game continued.

Some of the challenges were a lot more agricultural but the thing that I really noticed was how players attempted to avoid the contact and stay on their feet.

I constantly find myself frustrated by the rules of football. What, in theory, is a straight-forward game, is being gnawed away at. Little rule adjustments are put into place that do nothing to enhance the game while the big issues don’t get resolved.

Barcelona were struggling to break Napoli down last night but VAR was there to come to their rescue. A cross makes contact with a defender’s hand; VAR is on the case and lo and behold it’s a penalty.

They can’t get a settled definition on what handball is. The latest version that I have seen is that it’s handball 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

The referee saw nothing but was then required to view the monitor and consequently awarded a penalty to the home team. In my opinion the defender was being turned from side to side and the movement he made was perfectly natural, so it should not have been a penalty.

By invoking this rule, you end up with players then standing and running in unnatural positions. How can it be natural to defend with your arms behind your back? This tells you that players who have been making natural runs and arm movement are now afraid to do so and that natural movement may be perceived as unnatural by the team responsible for VAR.

The punishment simply doesn’t fit the crime, the crime of attempting to get back and defend. Most penalties I see awarded are ‘soft’ where the chances of the attacking team scoring are minimal.

Imagine a close game where each team has an expectation of 1.2 goals. Their most likely outcome is to score 1 goal. Say there is an 80% chance of scoring a penalty, so that the award of a penalty is worth 0.8 of a goal and 2/3rds of their expected goals in that game come from the award of the penalty.

If I were a manager desperate to win a game my instructions would be to aim the ball at a player’s hand or fall down at the slightest contact in the penalty area. When I see players do that, I am highly critical of them but that’s my sense of fair play. To win a match that might be what is required.

So, I return to ‘The Big Match’. Players attempted to stay on their feet. If in the referee’s opinion a player has made no effort to stay on their feet, then he should be entitled not to give a foul. I know implementation can be difficult but until something like this occurs, more and more soft penalties will keep occurring.