I was talking about this with some mates the other day, about how its blindingly obvious and again, that it'd be punished without hesitation elsewhere on the pitch.
But how does the law stand on giving a foul BEFORE the ball is in play, ie before the corner is taken? One lad said the ref can't card the player and penalise his team until it is. I don't know, does anyone agree with this?
The other problem for refs is this: Do you penalise the defender or the attacker or both? Just giving a penalty and a card to the defender isn't the simple answer it looks to be.
It's almost always a 50:50 situation, so why penalise the defender (OK in Skrtel's case it was clearly usually HIM!) when the attacker is likely to be doing it too? If that happened, attackers would do it to defenders with impunity while defenders would have to remain 'hands-off'. It'd be open to all sorts of shenanigans from the likes of Costa etc, making it look as if he was being held when he was doing it himself.
Simply put, no player should have any sort of
grip or even hand on another player. If that rule is kept to, the ref penalises BOTH attacker and defender by issuing a yellow card. Ref's assistant should be expected to flag if they see it, too. Play continues with the corner or free kick (ie no free kick or pen is awarded for the offence, just that both players involved are yellow carded).
There's a lot of sh*t like this that cheapens football and makes players (and ref's) look like cheats and invites inconsistency. Another one that drives me mad is when defenders 'shepherd' the ball out of play by blocking an attacker. How, in the laws of football, is that not 'obstruction'
Anywhere else on the pitch it would be.
These grey areas that have been allowed to become normal behaviour ruin the dignity of sport, so that we hear muppet pundits publicly praising players for blatant acts of cheating. Great example for the kids in an Olympic year!!!
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