gary69
Registered User
Yeah, in the past this would have been celebrated as an entertaing match with some great goals.
Euro: Group E: Belgium vs. Slovakia
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Yeah, in the past this would have been celebrated as an entertaing match with some great goals.
Wee Baby Seamus
Yo, Goober, where's the meat?
As opposed to what this was, which was an entertaining match
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Wee Baby Seamus
Yo, Goober, where's the meat?
Now I don’t know what to believe, because they’ve both never had a correct opinion but objectively one of them has to be right on this
Ianturnedbull
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Egresch
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I was celebrating 3 times like crazy and we only won 1-0.
OKR
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They call that exact handball 99% of the time it happens in the midfield, sometimes multiple times a game. The moment you allow it just because it led to a goal, it has become a advantage.
bluesfan94
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gary69
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Slovakia had a ton of guys go to ground for 2-3 min at a time along with max subs. Could have easily seen 9-10min.
TheMoreYouKnow
Registered User
The question really is whether it's deliberate and they've developed a few standards to determine that (because they can't read people's minds). Openda's contact meets the standard pretty easily because his arm is extended and he knows where the ball is i.e. it's not so much whether he actively seeks out to handle it, it's that he happily accepts that his hand could be helpful in controlling the ball.
It's the kind of play that gets called all the time at most levels, and I don't think it's really all that controversial. I've definitely seen way way harsher handball decisions on a pretty regular basis.
Fox kept harping on about this was the biggest upset in Euro history, I guess if you're looking at strictly FIFA Rankings yes (though Belgium probably shouldn't be 3rd in the world), but I mean come on the first game of a group stage can't compare to some of the wins Greece got in 2004 or Iceland vs. England (2016)
Either of those you mention would be bigger. By a country mile.
Denmark winning 92 as a replacement... Belgium's golden age is long over..
The UEFA rules specifically state that when judging handball intent does not matter. It's a faul whether deliberate or not. Intent may be used for additional penalties like a issuing a yellow card or sending the player off.
There was a write up on sportingnews just a couple of days ago.
Handball rules in football explained, including latest changes by FIFA, UEFA to hand ball in soccer | Sporting News United Kingdom
It is well-established that using your arms or hands is not allowed in football. Yet changes to the rules have made it difficult to comprehend for players, coaches, fans and even officials themselves.
www.sportingnews.com
TheMoreYouKnow
Registered User
First of all, UEFA doesn't make those rules - they follow the Laws of the Game. I read the current rule yesterday and I've followed how this rule has evolved over the last number of decades. I mean I've literally argued with other kids about this rule in like 1987 - because it's always been a cause of controversy at just about every level of the sport. I'm aware of what it currently says.The UEFA rules specifically state that when judging handball intent does not matter. It's a faul whether deliberate or not. Intent may be used for additional penalties like a issuing a yellow card or sending the player off.
There was a write up on sportingnews just a couple of days ago.
Handball rules in football explained, including latest changes by FIFA, UEFA to hand ball in soccer | Sporting News United Kingdom
It is well-established that using your arms or hands is not allowed in football. Yet changes to the rules have made it difficult to comprehend for players, coaches, fans and even officials themselves.
First of all, it still says "deliberately" in the first section of the rule. Deliberation was introduced as the sole official standard in the early 90s because the original rule was so broad (it simply said you can't handle the ball) and there were so many complaints about penalties etc. as a result of incidental contact. But of course this created a whole new grey area because you can't read people's minds, so intent is by default difficult to establish during a football match (it's not like you can call witnesses to build a case here).
Inevitably, defenders also realized that this provides them with an opportunity to increase the % of their body that can be utilized to block shots. In simple terms, if there's a shot and a defender jumped up raising their arms, they could block the ball with their arms saying that this is just the regular motion of how they jump and they didn't intend to handle the ball. It would be difficult to argue with that if they did indeed always raise their arms when jumping.
There was a general sense that this type of action still violates the spirit of the game because it's basically an unspoken fundamental 'belief' that you should try to avoid the ball hitting your hand/arm as much as possible in this sport and you certainly should never gain an advantage of any sort from doing so. The idea that players could practice and learn how to handle the ball 'incidentally' to their advantage was deemed offensive to the game.
So because officials still really felt they should penalize such conduct, the rules committee started messing about with arm and body position. First just in the referee instructions then in the actual rule book. They basically moved to a view where that body position and movement are approximate stand-ins for intent in cases where intent isn't obvious. In other words, it simply shifts the responsibility from the official to the player in those situations. The official no longer has any obligation to consider a player's intentions, instead they say the player should know that by moving his body in a certain way he unduly increases the odds of handling the ball and thus is responsible for any consequences resulting from that.
So really I'd say that it's not that intent doesn't matter anymore, it's just that FIFA basically gave up on the idea of being able to capture it explicitly in borderline situations, so they now view 'making your body unnaturally bigger' as equivalent to intent in those. There's a whole range of problems with that, too, but it is more specific and more easily enforced for sure.
