Cristiano Ronaldo’s handball and sending off for a second yellow card offence, shows once again how misunderstood hand ball is, even amongst Football League managers.
The game was played on a Sunday and therefore featured on BBC's Match of the Day 2 on which ex-Scotland and now Birmingham City Manager, Alex McLeish, was a guest pundit. In supporting the referee’s decision he said, ‘it was a deliberate handball, so according to the letter of the law, the referee had to book him’.
If Alex McLeish scans the Laws of the Game, he will find that there is no such letter of the law which says a deliberate handball is a yellow card offence. To start with, a hand ball has to be deliberate for it to be an offence at all and then the Law only says it is punished by a direct free kick. Nowhere does it state that a handball has to be cautioned.
However plenty of players have been cautioned for handball so does this mean the referees were wrong? Did Howard Webb make a mistake in cautioning Ronaldo? The answer of course comes in the ‘Interpretations of the
Laws of the Game and Guidelines for Referees, which appear at the back of the official book of the laws.
First of all it might be worth pointing out that in one set of circumstances,
hand ball appears in the laws as a sending- off offence. ‘A player, substitute or substituted player is sent off if he denies the opposing team a goal or obvious goal scoring opportunity by deliberately handling the ball.’
The first cautionable handball is connected with this law. If a player handles the ball to try and prevent the ball going into the goal but fails, in other words the ball still goes in, he can hardly be sent off as he hasn’t denied the goal. Instead the player would be cautioned for trying to cheat, in other words ‘unsporting behaviour’.
The next handball that warrants a yellow card is listed in the guidelines as ‘handles the ball to prevent an opponent gaining possession or developing an attack.’ This can happen at any time and in any place but is more likely when it stops a pass getting through for a likely attack.
The final instance when referees are told in the guidelines they must caution a handball is ‘if a player handles the ball in an attempt to score a goal (irrespective of whether or not the attempt is successful)’. We all remember Maradona’s so-called ‘hand of God’ when he punched the ball past Peter Shilton in the 1986 World Cup, unseen by the referee or his assistant. It is not just this sort of injustice that this interpretation seeks to eradicate but it sees even the attempt as cheating and any form of cheating is unsporting behaviour.
So did Ronaldo try to score with his hands? It was difficult to know what he was trying to do. Everyday it seemed a new explanation was forthcoming. Firstly it was said that Ronaldo was trying to stop the ball hitting his face. That doesn’t seem a very likely reason, as when a player tries to protect his face, he covers it with his hands rather than reach out to knock the ball away. The next explanation was that he thought he heard a whistle and was reaching out to catch the ball and this was then replaced by the story that he thought he heard a player injured behind him and sought to stop play.
There are perhaps some players who in these circumstances might have wanted to stop the game when directly in front of goal but I guess not many. The problem for Ronaldo is that even if any of these explanations were true, as a renowned and proven cheat he has difficulty in being believed.
Dick Sawdon Smith
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© R Sawdon Smith 2008