Question Number: 21606

Law 12 - Fouls and Misconduct 6/30/2009

RE: Travel Premier Under 19

Richard Robertson of Wilmington, DE USA asks...

U18 PREMER TRAVEL

I will be a clear as possible.

Player pulls the shirt of an attacking player and pulls him off the ball, (this occurs about 15 yards over the midline on the right side of the field, about 10 yards from the touch line, and the attacker is moving lateral to the goal and the defender is the last defender)

When the shirt is pulled and the attacker is able to get a toe on the ball and propels it forward. A trailing defender gets to the ball and continues to the goal.

Player goes 1 v 1 against the Keeper and keeper makes a great save and the ball goes off the post. Play continues for about one minute with no restart, and then the player who pulled the shirt of the attacker at the start of the play commits another foul ......a hard foul right outside of the box and the ball goes out bounds.

This is what I did and my reasoning ....

When the first shirt pull occurred I awarded advantage as the trail attacker was able to go towards the goal with the ball. I yelled to the defender, 'I am coming back for you'.

When the second foul occurred. I went to the point of the foul and the player who committed the fouls and pointed to the spot for the shirt pull, (a tactical foul, and a yellow in my opinion). I showed him the yellow card. Then I pointed to the foul where we were standing and showed him the yellow again for that foul. (This foul while not a RED was a definate foul worthy of a caution) I then pulled the RED out of my back pocket and ejected him.

I did not go to straight RED for the first foul as in my opinion Distance to goal and Direction were missing from the '4D's'. Also In my opinion these fouls are NOT SIMULTANEOUS it is two distinct instances. In my opinion persistent did not apply as the first foul was a tactical foul.

I have asked many referees at all levels Grade 8, State Referees, and a National Referee. The responses have been all over the board and about all equally distributed.

1. NO you can't show two yellows as the fouls occured at the same time. Show the yellow for the last foul, or issue him card for persistent infringment.

2. NO you can't show two yellows as he fouls occured at the same time show the yellow for the tactical foul. Ignore the other.

3. NO don't show the two yellows. Let the other one go, just ignore it.

4. NO you can't show two yellows, show a RED CARD for the last foul outside the box if it was severe enough to 'sell it' as a possible RED.

5. Issue a RED for the first foul. Even though the '4 D's' were not all present .. you could sell that there was clear intent to deny a goal scoring opportunity on the shirt pull.

6. Yes you did the right thing. They are not fouls that occurred at the same time. They are two separate instances. Since you clearly indicated that the first foul was going to be a booking, the player should have been more careful on committing another foul.

As a note the coach of the offending team had no issue that each of these instances were in fact worthy of yellow cards. Nor did he have an issue with the fact that it was made clear to his player that he was going to receive a yellow for the shirt pull. His issue was that these 'fouls occurred' had in fact, 'occurred at the same time' and he should have only received one yellow.

Please advise if this was the correct application and mechanic, thank you.

Answer provided by Referee Keith Contarino

You punished 2 separate fouls worthy of a caution. That makes 2 yellows followed by a red as you did. I would just make certain the second foul really was reckless as you know you are going to send him off if you issue it. I don't understand the 2 fouls at the same time logic. SUppose you had stopped play for the blatant hold and the player got in your face and dissented. You'd certainly punish the dissent wouldn't you?

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Answer provided by Referee Jason Wright

The fouls did not occur at the same time - the same period of play is NOT to be mistaken for 'the same time''. Simultaneous fouls would be, say, a player grabbing the shirt as he trips an opponent. Or a player deliberately handling it after he throws it in and before another player touches it (simultaneous handball and '2nd touch')

The player committed 2 cautionable offences - why should he get away with one cautionable offence?

As for point 5 - you already determined that there was no obvious goalscoring opportunity. The fact that he committed 2 cautionable offences doesn't change that. Just because you can sell the decision, it doesn't mean it's right.

You definitely did the right thing - but as Ref Contarino said, you certainly want to make sure both fouls are clear yellow cards. This really isn't the kind of situation where you want to award a borderline yellow card. The fact that you mentioned you were coming back for that player should make it clear to all concerned that he was getting booked for that.

Also, well done on how you handled the issuing of the cards. Making it very clear, as you did, what the two cards are for is the only way you're going to sell a decision like this. Well done!

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Answer provided by Referee Gary Voshol

I'm not sure where your critics are coming up with '2 fouls/misconduct at the same time'. Unless you didn't describe the situation to them as clearly as you did to us, and they missed the part about there being a minute between events. That's not the same time.

Law 5 has these bullet points:
• allows play to continue when the team against which an offence has been committed will benefit from such an advantage and penalises the original offence if the anticipated advantage does not ensue at that time
• punishes the more serious offence when a player commits more than one offence at the same time
• takes disciplinary action against players guilty of cautionable and sending-off offences. He is not obliged to take this action immediately but must do so when the ball next goes out of play

For the shirt pull, this sounds exactly what you did. You allowed play to continue for the advantage, and then cautioned at the next stoppage. The fact that the next stoppage was also a cautionable foul committed by the same bonehead player who hadn't learned to play nice made for a send-off.

There has been some discussion on other boards about the process of showing cards in succession. Some remember a memo or directive from USSF that says you don't hold up the yellow card twice in a row. However this answer from Jim Allen's USSF 'Ask A Referee' site confirms the yellow card is shown twice: http://www.askasoccerreferee.com/?p=1527

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The following questions were asked as a follow up to the above question...

See Question: 21614