Just another day with referees.
One of the many things that annoys me about the newcastle incident, is people saying VAR can’t intervene on a handball as he didn’t score the goal.
But that’s not true VAR can say that it was a handball offence if they believe so, like in this video. The goal scorer handball rule is regardless of if it would be a foul otherwise. So the potential handball was totally swept under the rug when discussing the incident.
Similar with the excuses about not having angles for the offside and ball out of play. “well they didn’t have them so what could they do?” Never stopped them before.
And now the “independent” review means we should have to accept that Gabriel wasn’t fouled.
I’m probably getting downvoted for this but the criticism and controversy to referees is getting insane. There are more articles about refereeing than tactics, it’s ridiculous. Just to be clear, I’ve been an Arsenal for nearly 30 years now.
On the McAllister handball, the rule states that if there is an unintentional handball in the build up to a goal, the goal should stand. The refs think that the handball was deliberate, so they disallowed the goal. At the end of the day, as someone who writes legislation in certain fields, I can confirm that you cant foresee all particular situations in the rules. As for every rule system (laws, regulations, etc.), there is a need for humans to implement and apply the rules to the particular situations.
This means that mistakes will happen. This also means that subjectivity plays a part but there is a difference between subjective and arbitrary. Almost everything that humans do is subjective to some degree. Football is no exception. The rules are the same for everyone, they have to be applied to particular situations by a human (a judge or, in football, a referee). And in a situation where a human has to make a decision, another human might have taken another decision. It’s the nature of the application of rules and it has to be accepted.
Now in the justice system, you can appeal and go to a higher court, then to a higher court, until the highest court which is usually, in Europe, the European Human Rights Court (or however it’s called in English). There could be a discussion to be had about an appeal system in football, but I dont really see how you can implement that without having to replay games or have huge refereeing pauses within games, which would just kill the game.
With all that said: the Newcastle goal is a succession of 50/50 calls that, per se, arent enough to disallow the goal or to overrule the on-field decisions, for various reasons. Bruno Guimaraes forearm to the head should have been a red, it is textbook violent conduct according to the laws of the game, it’s a mistake. Havertz’ tackle is right on the line between yellow and red, to me it’s subjective and the ref could have gone either way.