Question Number: 30607

Law 13 - Free Kicks 7/14/2016

RE: Pro Professional

former youth ref of Hordaland, Norway asks...

Two pet peeves from televised matches I would value your input on:

1. Referees nearly never caution players for faking injuries after genuine fouls. As a single successful simulation may give the other team a card, this is frustrating. A subset of this is the ludicrous ones where the contact is so light that no foul is given (e.g twice in one of the knockout matches at the recent Euros - the player [Pepe, perhaps] was even warned after the first).

2. At the higher levels defending players often stand far to close to free kicks near the midfield practically forcing a sideways pass. They deliberately prevent the kicking team playing the ball in the most desirable direction. Furthermore, they immediately challenge the ball after the inevitable sideways pass. Not all teams are as good at retaining possession as Barcelona, so I think several professional teams would prefer the ability to kick a free kick towards the opponents goal, without having to resort to a high ball towards the penalty area.
(If I were the kicker I would simply not take the kick until the encroachment/delaying of the restart was dealt with.)

Any comments on these situations would be appreciated.

Thanks for answering my more unlikely scenarios. The last penalty kick one (#30595) would be slightly more plausible if you had assistants, and the penalty kick deflected up in the air while retaining momentum meaning it would be in play for a substantial period. The three outcomes I listed were in general, not specific to the scenario.

Answer provided by Referee Joe McHugh

Hi
The modern game has many features that are objectionable and TV has not helped either. Far too often now players seek to get their opponents cautioned as it then restricts the cautioned players ability to say challenge later in the game. Now the difficulty for referees is knowing how much injury has been created by the foul and the referee even if he feels that there is some element of play acting is loath to take action.
I once had a situation where a player appeared more injured than I expected on an innocuous challenge. It happened just prior to half time so the player was getting treated close to my changing room. The mark on his calf was significant and it surprised me greatly that I had missed that level of contact. I thought he was feigning the injury.
Also in the modern game most team focus on possession with short passing in midfield. So many free kicks are played short either sideways or backways. I rarely see long balls in the Pro game except late on in the game. So in many ways Pros get what they accept and most accept this with referees obliging through lack of action. At the lower levels of the game it is much more fractious with teams expecting the referee to deal with it. Even at that jewel it is now a coached action to get a player in front of the ball to stop the QFK.

Answer provided by Referee Peter Grove

1. I think it's a tricky and delicate decision as to whether a player should be cautioned for simulation after being fouled. The Laws state that a player should be cautioned for feigning injury or pretending to have been fouled. Clearly, if the player was fouled, the 'pretending' clause cannot apply so that leaves feigning injury. Assuming, as you say, that the player was the victim of a genuine foul, the chances are high that he was at least slightly injured it can be very easy to misjudge the actual extent of that injury. I have seen a number of incidents where on first view, I thought there was not much contact at all and wondered why the player was making such a fuss but as Ref McHugh points out, you may find out later that the injury was in fact more serious.

Given the difficulty in being sure that the player is exaggerating an injury and especially when he has been clearly fouled, it would be a brave referee who would both award the foul and then immediately caution the player for simulation. I can imagine that this might technically be possible in an exceptionally obvious and egregious case but I have to say I cannot recall having seen this happen in any top level match.

Your second scenario with the example of Pepe is slightly different - here we're talking about a player not having been fouled so if the player collapses to the ground there's a higher likelihood of simulation. I did think that Pepe was lucky on a number of occasions to get away without a caution. However, it is always possible for there to be minor contact, no foul and yet still no simulation so unless the referee is sure the player has deliberately dived (and not just stumbled or lost his balance) there may be no need to issue a caution.

2. This is also one of my 'pet peeves' - players who fail to respect the required distance and/or deliberately delay the restart of play. Unfortunately as you say, it has become almost routine for teams to position a player right on top of a free kick to prevent a quick restart and for some reason (maybe 'expectations' as Ref McHugh says) even highly-qualified referees seem reluctant to punish this. I personally would like to see this punished more often. The law is quite clear on this: 'an opponent who deliberately prevents a free kick being taken quickly must be cautioned for delaying the restart of play.' Yet this seems to be one part of the law that (to misuse a Shakespeare quotation) is 'more honor'd in the breach than the observance.'

Note that this is different from intercepting a quick free kick, which is allowable. The 2016/17 Laws made a couple of minor changes in wording here, along with reversing the order of the paragraphs on intercepting and preventing. According to the explanation given in the laws, this was done in order to make a 'clearer distinction between 'preventing' a free kick being taken and 'intercepting' a quick free kick after it has been taken.'

The player does indeed have the option of not taking the kick until the player has withdrawn or been dealt with by the referee but that means the opponent has achieved his objective of preventing the quick free kick.