Question Number: 15358

Law 12 - Fouls and Misconduct 5/2/2007

RE: Select.... Under 13

Jim of San Jose, CA USA asks...

I'm a licensed referee and a coach. We were playing this weekend and our team had a corner kick. We took the corner and took several close shots on goal that were deflected by the keeper or bounce off a defender. As you can imagine legs were swiping at the ball all over the place. At one point the ball bounce off a defender and was going right to left accross the face of the goal about 1 - 2 feet from the goal line. One of their defenders bent down and pickep up the ball. We were awarded a PK but the girl was not sent off for denying a goal scoring opportunity. Was that the right call? In the same game we were attacking and one of our mids chipped a ball over the back line to our foward. A defender on the other team reached up and batted the ball down. (seriously) It was like an overhead volleyball serve. I felt she should have been sent off as well. We were awarded a direct kick but no card. Was that the right call?

Thanks,
Jim

Answer provided by Referee Richard Dawson

Given your description of events it is unlikely the referee was of your opinion hence you ask. Without seeing we cannot be sure. The criteria of DOGSO to send off and show a red card or the need to caution for breaking up attacking play as usb and show a yellow card rest in the opinion of the referee. Now we are taught certain things to look for, whether these were there and ignored by the referee we cannot say. Young ages tend to get a more liberal view as skill is on the lower end of the scale but here is a reprint of the ussf position paper on what to look for and consider

Law 12 provides that a defender whose violation of the Law prevents a goal or denies an obvious goal-scoring opportunity must be sent off and shown the red card. The "professional foul" which is taken in a cynical attempt to prevent opponents from scoring requires a quick, firm response by the referee. Such misconduct by the defender overshadows the severity of the foul itself. In order for a player to be sent off for denying an "obvious goal-scoring opportunity," four
elements must be present:
? Number of Defenders -- not more than one defender between the foul and the goal, notcounting the defender who committed the foul
? Distance to goal -- the closer the foul is to the goal, the more likely it is an obvious goalscoring opportunity
? Distance to ball -- the attacker must have been close enough to the ball at the time of the foul to have continued playing the ball
? Direction of play -- the attacker must have been moving toward the goal at the time the foul was committed
If any element is missing, there can be no send off for denying an obvious goal-scoring opportunity. Further, the presence of each of these elements must be "obvious" in order for the send off to be appropriate under this provision of Law 12
However, the foul might, by itself, warrant a card -- a caution for unsporting behavior, for example, if the challenge was reckless or a send off if the challenge was violent. If the foul by the defender is both violent and qualifies as an obvious goal-scoring opportunity offense misconduct, the referee should include both facts in the game report but must only list one official reason for the red card.
Referees are reminded that offenses which deny a goal-scoring opportunity are not limited to those punishable by a direct free kick or penalty kick but may include technical fouls for which the
restart is an indirect free kick. Cheers

Answer provided by Referee Keith Contarino

Maybe the referee saw the keeper close enough to not warrant a send off for DOGSO. Or maybe just got it wrong.

Answer provided by Referee Ben Mueller

Without seeing it I cannot tell. The decision to send off or not is based on the 4 D's. The referee must consider several factors when deciding. Chnces are if there were more than one defender between the ball and goal, the referee made a good decision on not sending off. The defender probably deserved at least a caution for stopping an attacking player...however.

Answer provided by Referee Gary Voshol

In the case of the ball going across the goal mouth when the defender picked it up, the ball wasn't headed into the goal, so it's not automatically a sendoff for DOGSO-handling. It could still be a DOGSO-foul depending on other factors - were there any attackers that could immediately play the ball, were there other defenders around, etc.

On the chip-over shot that was swatted down by a defender, the referee may have felt that the distance from the goal did not warrant DOGSO.

I don't know if either of these guesses about what the ref was thinking were correct or not. Maybe he was just thinking these were young innocent girls who couldn't possibly be committing misconduct. Or that he didn't want to risk making them cry. I don't know, we hear of all kinds of opinions and feelings out there. My feeling is that if the girls have come out to play a sport, we should let them play and expect them to abide by all the Laws of the Game. Especially if they have survived a tryout process to make the team. In other words, treat them exactly as we do the boys teams.

I will agree with my colleagues that if the ref decided these were not cases of denying a goal, a caution for unsporting behavior should have surely been considered.