Question Number: 30727

Law 12 - Fouls and Misconduct 9/7/2016

RE: Intermediate Under 13

Phil of Tarzana, CA United States asks...

Under the new LOTG, 12.9, the referee can (on rare occasions)allow advantage to be played on a red card offense. I want to see if I understand what happens.

Suppose blue attacker A1 is dribbling toward red goal. Red D1 does a tackle with excessive force & takes out blue attacker A2. Referee waits as A1 still has a goal scoring opportunity.

1) If a goal is scored, it counts & D1 is shown a red card & sent off.
2) If advantage never realized (within a second, A1 loses the ball), play should be stopped, D1 shown a red card & sent off, & play restarted with DFK or PK, depending upon where the foul occurred.
3) If advantage is squandered, play continues until the ball goes out of play or there's another foul by someone. Then, before the restart, D1 is red carded & sent off.

I hope all that above is correct (please let me know), but here's my biggest concern.

If advantage is never realized because D1 immediately, after the red card foul on A2, fouls A1, Law 12.9 says to stop play, send off D1, & restart with an INFK. However, don't you think that the restart should be a DFK or PK, based on the original foul that D1 committed? i.e. the only time you would restart with an IDFK is when advantage is squandered & D1 then gets involved in active play. And even then, if he committed another contact foul, you would restart with a DFK or PK based on that foul, right?

[Sorry for the length of this question!]

Answer provided by Referee Jason Wright

Advantage could be played on a red card offence under the old laws as well. Though you would only consider doing it if the attacking team still has an obvious goalscoring opportunity. Anything less and you want to stop play.

Under the old laws though, if you applied advantage you were forced to wait until the ball goes out of play to send off the player. The new laws provide an option to apply advantage but not have to wait for that length of time.

Answer provided by Referee Joe McHugh

Hi Phil
Advantage must be realised otherwise the referee goes back to the original foul. This law relates to situation were advantage is realised and in the past the referee had to wait until the next stoppage. By playing advantage with it realised the original foul is past and the referee cannot then go back. That is the norm for any advantage. What the new law is saying is that if the player to be sent off subsequently plays the ball or challenges/interferes with an opponent, the referee will stop play, send off the player and restart with an indirect free kick. As already stated in the past the referee had to wait until the next stoppage to do that which could allow the player that is being sent off to score, prevent a goal.
In some ways it is the regular IDFK restart if play is stopped to issue a card only.
As you say if the player commits another offence in its own right that would be the restart as the referee punishes the more serious offence which could result in a direct free kick, penalty kick.
An example would be where a defender commits a 2nd caution offence which fails, the attacker keeps going with advantage realised and then the player that is to sent off gets back to foul the attacker again inside the penalty area. The restart would be a penalty kick not an IDFK.