Question Number: 33205

High School 4/3/2019

RE: club/high school Under 18

jeff hart of ft worth, tx usa asks...

Our high school rules permit subs on corner kick only if team taking kick elects to sub. Team A advises field ref it elects not to sub. Team B coach checks with sideline judge who mistakenly tells him he can sub.
Team A sets up for corner under the okay from field ref.
Meanwhile, Team B at last minute (as Team A was placing ball on corner spot) runs one player off. The remainder of team B appears ready for the corner kick as does Ref. Team A under the okay from field ref proceeds to score on a header and the goal is so acknowledged by the Ref.

Team B protests that it was in the act of subbing as okayed by the side judge without the Refs knowledge. What is result? replay the kick to the deyriment of Team A? Or does Team B suffer the consequence of relying on side judge instead of the Ref (and clearly no substitution by Team A)?

thank you!

Answer provided by Referee Joe Manjone

Jeff,
One of the goals of high school sports is to provide participation opportunities for athletes. It is for this reason there are numerous substitution opportunities for high school soccer players.

Because of the numerous opportunities, the officiating team must work together to make certain that substitutes are allowed to enter during legal substitution opportunities, only when beckoned in by the referee, and that the players that have been substituted for leave the field before the game is restarted.

In your example which was a corner kick for team A, there was a legal substitution opportunity only if Team A had a substitute. Thus, the Assistant Referee (AR) obviously errored in not waiting for the referee to beckon the substitute onto the field and allowing the substitution.

The referees are a team and in your example, the AR who is part of that team errored. This is a correctable error that needs to be corrected before the game is restarted.

The AR should have immediately informed the referee of the error. The referee should have then disallowed the goal, required the player who left the field to return, and the kick to be retaken.

Hopefully, this was handled correctly

Answer provided by Referee Joe McHugh

Hi Jeff
The Laws and the Rules have defined ways in which substitutions are handled. That is to bring order and a fairness to the substitution process.
In your example Team B was not allowed to substitute and the assistant was in error by allowing that. The referee if he was aware of that could have corrected the error by disallowing the goal and the substitution and restart the game with a retake of the corner kick.
In a FIFA game the referee can and does delegate substitutions to the 4th official so as long as there was not 12 players on the field and the game signalled to restart the goal would be allowed. Generally at a substitution the referee will allow the entering substitute time to take up his position before allowing the restart of play.
I suppose in the example shown the possible unfairness was whether the substitute was not given sufficient time to get to a defensive position if that was the intention. I also believe that coaches need to be more aware of the circumstances in these situations. Was it a good idea to substitute a player in such a circumstance. Was Team B aware that it was not a viable substitution opportunity?