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Recently, we confronted those who follow us on Twitter with a rather thorny question regarding outside interference. So, without further ado, here’s the question that we asked: Goal Kick is taken by the goalkeeper. The ball leaves the penalty box and then hits an overhanging tree branch. The ball bounces back into the penalty box and the goalkeeper catches it with his hands. Decision?

Now, before we provide a correct answer to this question, we have to admit that we posed this question being fully aware that it would cause some difficulty, because the Laws of the Game do not specifically deal with the situation we described. We also posed this question because we knew that your first reaction would be to call for the restart by dropped ball since there was “interference” when the ball contacted an object that was not part of the field of play. Finally, we wanted to examine more closely the USSF’s analysis of what constitutes “outside interference” and what a proper restart is when it occurs.

As some of you may know, in the last week’s Premier League game between Manchester United and Queens Park Rangers, the assistant referee missed an obvious offside by a proverbial mile (see video below at approx. 2.20 min).  Compounding the mistake, the referee pointed to the spot and sent off the QPR defender for fouling Ashley Young inside the area and denying him an obvious goal scoring opportunity.  Needlessly to say, neither the foul (however it might have been debatable) nor the send off would occur if the assistant referee correctly signaled for the offside.

In this blog, we are writing about remarks that were included in the Advice to Referees on the Laws of the Game issued by the United States Soccer Federation (the “USSF”) in 2011.  Specifically, we express our disappointment and dismay over the advice offered by the USSF, which appears to direct referees to disregard specific provisions of the Laws of the Game, dealing with the substitution and changing of goalkeepers.  Indeed, we direct your attention to the following paragraph in section 8.3 titled “THE START OF PLAY” and, in particular, to the sentence that we underlined below:

In this article, we are highlighting a no-offside decision that was made by the assistant referee in the game between DC United and FC Dallas.  As the video clip rather indisputably shows, when the ball was played , Blas Perez of FC Dallas was clearly in an offside position.  However, as all referees and students of the Laws of the Game should know, simply being in an offside position is not an offense.  The Laws of the Game require more.  Thus, before we start passing our judgment on the assistant referee’s decision, let’s review waht happened (see video below), analyze the applicable law and then apply it to the situation at hand.

We wanted to highlight one referee’s decision from this past weekend’s MLS game.  In a game between Columbus Crew and Montreal Impact, Mr. Mark Geiger, called a foul on a Montreal Impact player, Jeb Brovsky, for elbowing the opponent.  The infringement occurred roughly in the middle of the field and early on in the game in the 19^th minute.  For these reasons, many referees would be inclined to “look the other way” and only caution the offending player.  However, Mr. Geiger correctly sent off the Montreal player who, as replays clearly showed, made no real attempt to play the ball (see video below). 

We watched several local games over the past couple weeks.  It boggled our mind that all of the refereeing crews in all of these games failed to observe and enforce a proper substitution procedure. Unfortunately, this was not something out of ordinary. Over the past several years, we have noticed that referees consistently fail to adhere and enforce the substitution procedure that is spelled out in the Laws of the Game.  For example, referees regularly let substitutes to enter the field of play before substituted players exit it.  Or, the substitutes were allowed to enter the field of play from the area next to their team’s bench and not from the halfway line. We also saw the referees allowing substitutions to take place before their assistant referees were even informed that a team wanted to substitute a player or before a substitution slip was completed.

Regular readers of this blog already know that we covered the goal line technology debate in a number of posts. However, we seem to be unable to get away from this subject mostly because referees continue to make glaring mistakes and fail to award goals where they are clearly merited.  The latest error was committed by the referees who officiated a game between Bolton Wanderers and Queens Park Rangers this past Saturday, March 10, 2012.

At the time when the game was still scoreless, Clint Hill, QPR’s defender, headed the ball towards Bolton’s goal.  Adam Bogdan, Bolton’s goalkeeper, dove after the ball and desperately tried to stop it from going over the line but all of the replays and pictures (see above) clearly showed that the ball crossed over the goal line.  In fact, it appeared that by the time Bogdan got to it, the ball was already one foot over the line. QPR should have been leading Bolton by a score of 1:0.

In this blog, we are highlighting some of the most important conclusions and numbers from the fourth edition of the Club Licensing Benchmarking Report for the fiscal year 2010 that was most recently published by the UEFA. The report provides a detailed and comprehensive analysis of financial matters of the top division European Clubs. The information included in the report was received directly from the clubs and their national associations. Here are the highlights:

Revenues/Income: according to the report, the income of the 734 European top division clubs totaled €12.8 billion.  The average income growth per year over the last five years was 9.1%.  This meant that incomes of top soccer clubs in Europe far outpaced the growth of the European economies which, in stark contrast, grew only 0.2% on average.  The average revenue of English clubs was €134 million.  The biggest contributor to the rising incomes/revenues of top division clubs have been broadcasting deals, which have grown at annual rate of 12.4%.

Have you ever considered that your judgment was biased simply because your brain is wired in such a way as to negatively perceive events unfolding from right-to-left? Well, the scientists at the Neurology Department and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience of the University of Pennsylvania conducted a scientific study to test whether movement from right-to-left (leftward movement) predisposed soccer referees to call a foul. According to the authors of the study, populations that read from left-to-right demonstrate a well-documented perceptual-motor bias which creates discomfort with the leftward motion. This discomfort leads these populations to view or perceive events moving from right-to-left (opposite to the direction in which they read/write) in a negative way. So, for example, readers of left-to-right languages were found to "rate goals scored from left-to-right [rightward motion] as more beautiful than goals scored in the opposite direction." The experiment's hypothesis proposed that American referees (or, simply put, those from western-world nations whose languages are read from left-to-right) would be more predisposed "to call a foul when the direction of play moves leftward."

This past Saturday, AC Milan and Juventus played a pivotal game that could determine the championship of the Italian Serie A this season. AC Milan struck the first blow in the 14^th minute of the game when Antonio Nocerino's shot fortuitously ricocheted off a Juventus' defender. The ricocheted ball completely fooled Buffon who hopelessly watched it go into the goal and AC Milan was up 1-0. In the 26^th minute of the game, AC Milan should have been up by two goals after Sulley Muntari's header but the Referees - and more critically, the Assistant Referee - failed to notice that the ball crossed over the goal-line. The replays, and the pictures, clearly showed that, despite Buffon's valiant effort to stop the ball from going over the goal-line, the ball was already inside his goal when he parried it away.

We were glued to our TV sets this past Wednesday and Thursday watching the Champions League matches between Barcelona v. Bayern Leverkusen and AC Milan v. Arsenal. However, as referees and not just simply fans of the game, we could not help but notice the positioning of the additional assistant referees in those matches. The additional assistant referees in both of these games were positioned on that side of the goal that was nearer to the assistant referee. This immediately struck us as a rather curious positioning.

Referee decisions involving the offense known as "handling the ball" almost always stir controversy. Those that result in penalty kicks are guaranteed to be hotly debated. In two recent games, Liverpool v. Manchester City and Everton v. Fullham, both Phil Dowd and Howard Webb awarded penalty kicks for handling offenses committed by Manchester City and Everton players, respectively. Did they get it right? After all, just because the contact is made between the ball and the player's hand or arm does not automatically mean that the handling occurred. Rather, the Laws of the Game state that the handling offense is committed only if a player "handles the ball deliberately." So let's take a deeper and more exacting look into what referees must consider when making decisions whether the offense occurred.

We have no idea how Mancini could think that the appeal would be successful. After all, the FA requires that to be successful on a claim of Wrongful Dismissal, the Club must show that the referee "has made a serious and obvious error." Here, as we explain in more details below, the case for Wrongful Dismissal was not even close. The dismissal was required.

Indeed, Law 12 - Fouls and Misconduct, expressly states that a player must be sent off if his offense rises to "serious foul play." According to the Interpretation of the Laws of the Game and Guidelines for Referees issued by IFAB, a player is guilty of serious foul play if "he uses excessive force or brutality against an opponentâ€." Thus, "any player who lunges at an opponent in challenging for the ball from the front, from the side or from behind using one or both legs, with excessive force and endangering the safety of an opponent is guilty of serious foul play." According to FIFA's guidance, "using excessive force means that the player has far exceeded the necessary use of force and is in danger of injuring an opponent." FIFA rules require that a player who uses excessive force be sent off or shown red card.