Question Number: 15715

Law 12 - Fouls and Misconduct 6/6/2007

Kyle Kenney of Kingston, Canada asks...

Alright.. I'm sure this question has been brought up before but..

Handball: What is the proper call?

I'm been gettin' yelled at because I let handballs go because they were at the players side and he didnt play it intentionally.

Also another question, I was reffing a girls game an Attacker kicked the ball and it was going right for a Defender's chest. (Being a girl) she tried to proctect her chest by bringing her arms up (and close to her body) to protect herself. What's the call there?

So basically I have two questions in need of answering..

Thank you!

Answer provided by Referee Gary Voshol

Referees should never call a handball. The offense is deliberately handling the ball. That takes care of a lot of calls that shouldn't be made, because there was no deliberate action to contact the ball.

Deliberate is only slightly different than intentional. Intentional says, "I wanted to use my hands to play the ball." Deliberate says, "I moved my hands so that they would play the ball, whether or not I actually wanted to handle it." Intentional requires that the referee read the player's mind to figure out why she handled the ball. Deliberate only requires the referee to see that she handled it.

We recently answered a question on girls covering their chest and whether or not it was handling. The complete discussion can be found in Q#15564. We noted that somewhere between the U-littles and the Women's World Cup, that kind of covering up during dynamic play stops (as opposed to set pieces like walls). It is up to each referee to decide if the level of the game today is where it will be allowed or not.

Answer provided by Referee Chuck Fleischer

Kyle the only question is did or did not the player deliberately handle the ball. There must be some action taken by the player Or the player must choose to let the ball hit the hand or arm rather than get out of the way. The exception is a position taken before a free kick and not moving before the ball's impact. You have every right to let "handballs" go because the Law doesn't mention "handballs".

The story with that is FIFA have a paper out saying no referee is to call "handball" any more. They do, however, expect referees to intervene when a player deliberately handles the ball...

Regards,

Answer provided by Referee Richard Dawson

Hi Kyle,
oh if you only knew how many times this hand ball thing has come up!
The penal foul is refered to as
"? handles the ball deliberately (except for the goalkeeper within his own penalty area)" or we can go for" deliberate handling", which is easier and still denotes WHY we make the call!
It is an important distinction to understand that intentional is not the same as deliberate when we refer to the ACT itself, often there is no intent to handle the ball but they use a deliberate action to play the ball it and an ooops occurs. No referee can read the mind of a player! We judge only WHAT the player does! We can somtimes interpret the action as cautionable or even fitting a DOGSO send off depending on circumstances . We also cut the younger lesser skilled players more slack in not making a better decision to avoid the ball or if they wind up misplaying the ball as doubtful. We can even see a deliberate handling as trivial in certain cases. ll in all you set a standard hopefully a good one and you ignore the complaints or grumblings of those that either agree to disagree or they can go home!
Cheers