When we conduct the session on penalty kicks on our training courses for prospective referees, someone almost always asks the question, "can the kicker, instead of going for goal, just play the ball for a teammate to run onto? Our answer is always "yes but why would anybody want to?"
If you watched Match of the Day last Saturday, you will know that Robert Pires of Arsenal is probably asking himself the same question. Apparently talked into it by Thierry Henry, after having scored a perfectly executed penalty earlier in the game, Pires decided to lay the ball off for Henry to run onto from outside the area.
If you didn't see it, let me run through the sequence. Pires ran up to take the kick, stopped and then put his foot on top of the ball to roll it forward. The law says 'the ball is in play when it has been kicked and moves forward.' These days we have to accept that rolling the ball with the soles of the boot is kicking, so did it move? It certainly seems to have bobbled off the penalty mark. One commentator observed that the ball hadn't travelled its circumference but he's living in the past as that hasn't been the qualification since 1996.
Did it go forward? We must assume that it did from what followed. If the ball does not go forward the game has not restarted, so a free kick cannot be given and the kick would be retaken. Free kicks can only be awarded when the ball is in play.
What actually happened next is that Henry rushed into the penalty area, as previously agreed and apparently practised on the training ground, but sprinted past, leaving Pires standing sheepishly over the ball. Danny Mills of Manchester City, following Henry, kicked the ball clear of the penalty area.
This whole bizarre episode then took another twist, when referee Mike Riley blew his whistle. Manchester City players raised their arms in protest, fearing no doubt that Riley was going to order the kick to be retaken and were relieved to find that he had actually awarded a free kick to them instead. This for many was the greatest mystery - what was the free kick awarded for?
Some newspapers seemed to think that it was for Pires playing the ball a second time. Certainly if that had been the case, it would have been punishable by an indirect free kick. The kicker of any type of free kick, or the thrower at a throw-in, cannot play the ball a second time once the ball is in play, until it has been touched by another player. Some observers however suggested that the referee's sight deceived him if he thought there was a second touch and certainly my video recording of the incident is inconclusive.
However, there are two other possibly reasons for the free kick. Pires ran up to the ball and then stopped before his attempted roll of the ball. Although not covered in the laws, in the referee's other book, 'Advice on the Application of the Laws', it
says that, while it is legal for a player to try to deceive the goalkeeper as to his intentions, if he stops his kicking action in order to make the goalkeeper move, this is trickery and unsporting behaviour.
But this would have meant a yellow card so I favour another solution. I spotted Henry entering the arc on the edge of the penalty area before Pires played the ball. That arc measures the ten yards which players must observe until the ball has been kicked. Regular readers will know that encroachment by an attacker when a goal is not scored is now an indirect free kick.
There are a number of possible solutions but only Mike
Riley knows which is his chosen one.
Dick
Sawdon Smith