I think the football lawmakers have lost sight of what was trying to be achieved when the game was invented and developed in the modern era and some of the laws have become ridiculous. Namely:
Handball
The original intention was to stop players from deliberately handling the ball. That should remain as the intention.
The fact that players are now penalized if the ball inadvertently hits their hand/arm is crazy. The decision last night to award Man City a penalty was plainly ridiculous and that alone should make the rule/lawmakers have a re-think.
The referee should be allowed to use his judgement as to whether the handball was intentional or not. This won’t be perfect, but at least we will get away from the current position of, if it hits your hand/arm while your jumping then it’s automatically a penalty nonsense.
Offside
Again, the original intention was to stop players from seeking an unfair advantage by straying beyond the last defender or indeed from “goal hanging". Totally sensible.
Nowadays a player is called offside if the tip of their toe, arm or any other part of their body is even a millimeter beyond the last defender. This is totally straying from what the offside concept was originally intended to achieve and it only seeks to ruin the game in my opinion. Richarlison was denied a perfectly good goal at the weekend and there have been countless other examples (not just involving Spurs players) that have also been unfair.
I think they should revert to the “daylight" interpretation. i.e. if there’s daylight between the last defender and the attacker, then it’s offside. If not, it’s onside.
Anyone else think the laws in these areas need an overhaul and need to focus on what the original intentions were?
Football (Ass Like) Laws
posted on 16/3/23
Why can't rules be subective?
Why can't we all be mature enough to let a referee decide whether the handball was deliberate?
Surely it's better than this current mess, where we punish people who have in no way used their arms to affect the ball, and it has simply hit them.
posted on 16/3/23
Handball doesn't even seem that difficult to me for the vast majority of calls. Have they handled it deliberately by moving toward the ball, have they deliberately spread their arms so contact is likely - that would cover most and should count as a foul.
There'll be a few touch n go ones where intent to either handle or spread is questionable but it really shouldn't be that tricky with replays and if it's a proper 50/50 then go with the refs initial judgement
posted on 16/3/23
"Why can't we all be mature enough to let a referee decide whether the handball was deliberate?"
Got nothing to do with maturity
Its all to do with consistency, and attempts to ensure that fouls or potential fouls are given or not in exactly the same way in every game, regardless of who the referee he is, who the VAR referee is, what club is playing, where games are being played....etc....etc.
If you don't have that......slurs of bias and unfairness will always be thrown about.
If you want to leave things as widely open to interpretation as that, the rules might aswell just say that any time the ball hits a players hand, it might be a foul, it might not be, who knows because its purely your Donald Duck whether the ref thinks there's been a foul or not....do you really want that?
posted on 16/3/23
comment by Silver (U6112)
posted 17 hours, 25 minutes ago
comment by Devonshirespur (U6316)
posted 40 minutes ago
comment by Silver (U6112)
posted 4 hours, 45 minutes ago
Tennis margins of error on line calls were c. 3.6mm. It was reckoned c. 8% of calls were wrong. Higher frame rate cameras can reduce it to c. 2mm. A ball still travels about a foot between frames. The trajectory and call is a simulation. Latest tennis setups use 340fps cameras. The decision is accepted.
Goal line hawkeye tech manages an error c. 5mm. They are using 500fps cameras.
Offsides are decided using 50fps (for player position) & 120fps (for when the ball is struck) cameras. The VAR guys get presented 3 frames to choose the latter moment - they say it is usually obvious? Then they use that to freeze the position of players and draw their lines. There are many sources of error. Some might cancel, some might multiply. Still better than biased or useless linos imho.
The faster, simulated offsides at the WC were less controversial, right? People trust a machine making decisions in <0.5s more than what we have, right?
We need to stick at it until that point, right?
Hand balls - meh - it is harsh but more consistent. If we go back to 100% interpretation folk will whine about that when it goes against their team.
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Hawkeye in tennis uses 6 cameras typically to track the ball and build a 3d picture of its actual trajectory.
It does not simulate the balls flight per se, it tracks it.
The same is used in cricket although the last part, after the ball hits the pad, is simulated to predict where the ball went.
Similar tech for goal line decisions.
The system used in the VAR offsides is totally different. It doesnt track the ball it just films it.
The latest offside VAR tech does introduce tracking of ball and player.
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Digress and all that but in the case of tennis and goal line it is both tracking AND simulation.
Just did my math again and if I have it right even with 500fps cameras a 140mph tennis ball travels 4.8" between frames so sure it is tracked but where and how it hits the ground involves some simulation.
Ditto for goal line though the cameras, speeds, trajectories are typically different.
Cricket no idea cos I don't have much of a clue and never watch it.
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The simulation is marginal as if you have a start point (frame 1) and an end point (frame 2) then you are simulating less than 5 inches of movement between 2 fixed points. For a ball travelling 140mph that will be a straight line across such a short distance.
For goaline it is only ever predicted if clear sight of the ball is lost
posted on 16/3/23
comment by St3vie (U11028)
posted 5 hours, 54 minutes ago
"Why can't we all be mature enough to let a referee decide whether the handball was deliberate?"
Got nothing to do with maturity
Its all to do with consistency, and attempts to ensure that fouls or potential fouls are given or not in exactly the same way in every game, regardless of who the referee he is, who the VAR referee is, what club is playing, where games are being played....etc....etc.
If you don't have that......slurs of bias and unfairness will always be thrown about.
If you want to leave things as widely open to interpretation as that, the rules might aswell just say that any time the ball hits a players hand, it might be a foul, it might not be, who knows because its purely your Donald Duck whether the ref thinks there's been a foul or not....do you really want that?
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There was nothing wrong with the handball rule or any rule around fouls at all before var was introduced. This need for binary decisions is a modern obsession empowered by watching endless high def replays.
End of the day, something non contact and not reliant on organic patterns of play like cricket or tennis, this kind of refereeing is fine. The benefit far outweighs the cost in that it's easy to say whether the ball has crossed the line or not or whatever, and stopping for a minute has no effect on the game itself. Judging a contact sport with no subjectivity is frankly absurd. I don't care how good you imagine technology will get anytime soon, but it's not going to make a factual judgement on whether a player touching another is unfair or not.
The most realistic way of achieving what you're talking about is to change the rules so that any contact is a foul like they did with handball for a while. It's a farce. Well, if you like football it is. If you really like factual decisions I guess that's great. You do you. Probably you'd enjoy maths.
posted on 16/3/23
comment by St3vie (U11028)
posted 7 hours, 11 minutes ago
"Why can't we all be mature enough to let a referee decide whether the handball was deliberate?"
Got nothing to do with maturity
Its all to do with consistency, and attempts to ensure that fouls or potential fouls are given or not in exactly the same way in every game, regardless of who the referee he is, who the VAR referee is, what club is playing, where games are being played....etc....etc.
If you don't have that......slurs of bias and unfairness will always be thrown about.
If you want to leave things as widely open to interpretation as that, the rules might aswell just say that any time the ball hits a players hand, it might be a foul, it might not be, who knows because its purely your Donald Duck whether the ref thinks there's been a foul or not....do you really want that?
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It absolutely is to do with maturity.
We have many fans who can’t accept that just because their opinion differs from the referee, that doesn’t mean the referee is wrong.
The game doesn’t work without subjectivity.
The only to do that would be to make it a non contact sport. Is that what you want?
posted on 17/3/23
So we have went from talking about handball...to talking about the game being a non contact sport??
What part of trying to make the handball rule somewhat constant and black and white.......has anything to do with judging if a player tackling another player is a foul?
So sorry, I totally disagree...things can be made somewhat black and white with handball, we are still in the midst of getting to that point and getting it right, but the whole "making your body unanturally larger" thing is definitely a start and going in the right direction in my opinion
The talk here is about the ref deciding if a handball was deliberate or not....for me handball doesn't have to be deliberate.
If a player is sliding to block a shot, and his hand is trailing behind his body, and the ball doesn't end up in the goal because it has hit the defenders trailing arm....for me, that's not a deliberate handball, but it is a foul.
The current rules would agree with that point....but this idea of "letting the ref decide if its deliberate or not" could result in some refs thinking that it was just unlucky and letting the defender way with it....which for me, is totally and utterly wrong, hence why I don't think the handball rule should be left open to interpretation as widely as is being suggested here.
posted on 17/3/23
The article isn’t just about handball, and you suggest we remove subjectivity from football… that would mean it becomes a non contact sport.
Equally, the only way for handball not to be subjective is to make the rule that if the ball touches the arm/hand then it’s a foul.
Imo that’s a terrible idea.
posted on 17/3/23
St3vie
Yeah fair enough I went off on a bit of a tangent there. But my point was that removing subjectivity from football at all is impractical at best. And the thing is, while I can respect what you're saying in that you don't think handball should be up to the refs, I don't agree that there's a compelling case to be changing the rules so that you remove the concept of intent completely.
There's still a massive grey area right? We're forcing defenders to play with their arms behind their backs in the box. I don't see how that's better. I've seen penalties given for a handball when the defender is falling and it hits the arm he's using to break his fall.
All of which to say, this is way beyond the original remit of var. Going down this rabbit hole is what I've moaned about since the very beginning.
posted on 17/3/23
comment by Bãleš left boot (U22081)
posted 46 minutes ago
St3vie
Yeah fair enough I went off on a bit of a tangent there. But my point was that removing subjectivity from football at all is impractical at best. And the thing is, while I can respect what you're saying in that you don't think handball should be up to the refs, I don't agree that there's a compelling case to be changing the rules so that you remove the concept of intent completely.
There's still a massive grey area right? We're forcing defenders to play with their arms behind their backs in the box. I don't see how that's better. I've seen penalties given for a handball when the defender is falling and it hits the arm he's using to break his fall.
All of which to say, this is way beyond the original remit of var. Going down this rabbit hole is what I've moaned about since the very beginning.
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There definitely is a grey area and there always will be, I totally agree
For me, in terms of subjective calls, I'd rather the situation was taken into account, and whether the trajectory of the ball was altered significantly
I mean the penalty the other night given against Leipzig at Man City...for me that was a joke, coz it was minimal contact with his arm, and it really didn't change the path that the ball was travelling
For other instances, if a cross is being played and it looks like it's going out of play, and hits a defenders arm on the way....for me that's a harsh penalty to give aswell
Would make far more sense to give it if the contact with the arm/hand has a material impact on the play, deliberate or not
But even then, there will be grey areas