Question Number: 27421

Law 5 - The Referee 5/12/2013

RE: Comp. Under 15

Larry of Danville, CA USA asks...

Question on Advantage. You see a foul, but call advantage as the player maintains possession. The fouled player immediately passes the ball to a player in an offside position, which is called by your AR. Do you bring it back, or did they squander their advantage?

I assume your opinion would be the same if the occurrence all happened in the penalty area (although no signal would actually be given), but what should your mechanics be to help sell the call either way?

Answer provided by Referee Gary Voshol

It would depend on what you saw as the advantage.

If the only advantage you saw was a pass to the player in the offside position, then there really was no advantage to be had.

On the other hand, if the player had several good choices to pass to, or could keep the ball himself, then yes he has squandered his advantage.

Remember, just keeping possession, while a part of advantage, does not entirely define advantage. The team must be in a better situation by the ref not stopping play than what they would get with a free kick.

Should you decide to call the advantage back and go with the foul, all you need to do is state that the advantage was not realized.

Answer provided by Referee Joe McHugh

Hi Larry
Interesting question. If the referee felt that the advantage only included a pass to a sole team mate and he was not aware that he was in an offside position then there is no advantage there and play could be brought back to the original foul. It would happen almost immediately.
If however the referee saw a promising position developing with multiple options including continuing to dribble or other passes with play moving on a few seconds then the team has squandered advantage through the pass to the player in an offside position. That is why playing of advatage is a skill that referees must develop.
Now the advice on a foul inside the penalty area is to just delay the whistle a second and 'wait and see'. Most times if it is a 'minor' foul with the player righting himself and continues on then you hope that he scores in which case the goal is awarded. It gets more difficult on the 'squander' and the referee has to make a call as to whether advantage was realised or not.
I had one recently where a player was fouled by the goalkeeper around about the penalty mark, the ball ran kindly to an attacker who continued on with a few touches and on his weak foot kicked the ball just past the post into the side netting. I decided that 'advantage' had been realised and the attacking team accepted the decision. If the player had been in an offside position then there was no advantage there and it would have been a penalty kick and a dismissal for the goalkeeper.