Are the rules there to be broken?

Written by David Richardson and The Hand of Blog

One thing that a lot of people seem to do is question rules and also break them; we’re talking about all rules here, from the Ten Commandments to diving in a football match. Funnily enough it seems a lot of footballers often manage to break all eleven of those at some point during their careers. For now, let’s just focus on the rule that concerns handling the ball and whether the fine line between intentional and unintentional handling needs to be clearer.

One of the most commonly heard phrases at a football match is; "HANDBALL!". This isn’t just when there is an actual handball of course, it happens whenever the ball goes near a players arm. But what really is handball? In FIFA's Laws of the Game 2005, Law 12 says a free-kick or penalty will be awarded if a player;

 "handles the ball deliberately (except for the goalkeeper within his own penalty area)".

‘Deliberately’ is the key word here. This suggests why a penalty was given against Manchester United's Patrice Evra during a match against West Ham earlier this season. Evra's arms were in an 'unnatural position' (at head height) when struck by the ball but Evra clearly didn't intentionally try and handle the ball.

However, former Premier League referee David Elleray has said the referee's interpretation depends on whether the hand or arm is in an "unnatural" position at the point of contact. This suggests why referee, Lee Mason, gave the penalty but the FIFA rule is that the player must deliberately handle the ball, which Evra didn't do. The rule doesn't state anything about the players arm being in an ''unnatural” position. Coincidently, in the same game, West Ham's Matthew Upson was penalised for handball inside the Hammers penalty area. Upson’s arms were by his side when United's full back, Fabio Da Silva, tried to cut the ball back. How could Upson have got his arm out of the way of the ball from 3 yards away? And this time the offending arm wasn't in an unnatural position.

It seems strange is that there is no clear rule set out by FIFA regarding unintentional handball. It is left up to the discretion of the referees. This can be seen from two completely viewpoints;

1. It’s good that the referees have more control over what are difficult and contentious decisions.
2. It’s bad because without a set rule or guidelines, a handball decision could completely change depending on which referee was officiating as they are left to come up with their own rules on when a handball is unintentional within a split second of the event occurring.

Handballs and the resulting decisions made by a referee can be incredibly controversial in football, especially when they occur inside the penalty area. So surely for such a difficult and often confusing thing, the best course of action for FIFA to take would be to clarify the rules surrounding unintentional handballs. But then again, how can you actually tell the difference between an intentional and unintentional handball….

All this then begs the question....should FIFA justify certain rules of the beautiful game?