I've been meaning to post a thread about this for a while. In my opinion, there is a systemic problem with the profession of refereeing in the game, where referee's are obsessed with applying the laws of the game to the letter, with no regard or appreciation of the context of the game, or even why the laws are there in the first place.
Balduena's red card for West Ham against Chelsea today was the latest of an increasingly common set of occurrences where a referee has completely failed to use common sense to make a decision. The reason the Red Card exists in football in the first place is to either discourage dangerous play to keep the players safe (such as a wild, out of control, studs up challenge), or to discourage actions that are blatant breaches of the rules to gain an advantage (such as fouling a player bearing down on goal as the last man). The red card today was neither. It was studs up, but purely accidentally, in a follow-through from kicking the ball! If Chilwell doesn't close him down, he doesn't get sent off, simple as that. So really, all the referee has done is taken an innocuous incident (which lets face it, at worst has given Chilwell a graze down his calf), while permanently changing the dynamic of the game in Chelsea's favour.
The McTominay incident against Spurs was another example of this. McTominay throws his hand back in an attempt to hold off Son and just happens to hit him in the face. If Son brushes that off and keeps chasing McTominay, none of that happens and the goal stands. But because Son goes down, attention is drawn to another otherwise innocuous incident, and leads to the goal being disallowed.
Go back further, and you can even look at our winning penalty against PSG in 2019. Is it a handball? It's debatable, but probably. But what is completely ignored about that incident is that Dalot has hit one of the worst shots you'll ever see, which by its trajectory is clearly headed into row Z. Kimpembe is actually three feet off the ground when it hits his arm. If he hadn't turned or left his arm in the flight of the ball, the ball would have gone out, and probably so would we. But the referee completely ignored the context of the incident and we got, very, very lucky.
There are hundreds of recent penalty incidents where there has clearly not been enough contact for the player to go down, but because contact has been made, the referee for whatever reason feels compelled to give the decision.
I have a similiar gripe about offsides, as the offsite law was put in place to ensure the attacker does not gain an unfair advantage. Being a millimetre offside clearly offers no advantage, but despite the fact technology has forced us to apply the law to an extreme degree, no-one has thought to ask whether it's time to look at the law itself (eg, the whole of an attacker needs to be in front of the defender, or at least a part of the body that can score, as Wenger suggested).
There have been multiple instances of these kind of decisions throughout this season, many with VAR involved, but some not (it is a problem that pre-dates VAR as I've been complaining about this for years). Either out of fear of getting a decision wrong, or just through a complete lack of critical thinking and common sense, referees are applying these laws with no consideration of why they are there in the first place. As a result, tiny bits of accidental contact are having wildly disproportionate influences on games.
It needs to change. Referee's need to be trained to apply common sense when actioning the laws of the game, but this is an increasing rarity. Frankly, I think this would be a thing if referees had to have press conferences (or even just a mike on them like in rugby), in order to justify their decisions. But the profession as a whole needs to reform how they apply these laws, to prevent important games turning on factors that have nothing to do with tactics or footballing ability.
I'm going to continue to bump this thread every time I see an incident that's an example of this to show how common it is. I encourage others to do the same.
Balduena's red card for West Ham against Chelsea today was the latest of an increasingly common set of occurrences where a referee has completely failed to use common sense to make a decision. The reason the Red Card exists in football in the first place is to either discourage dangerous play to keep the players safe (such as a wild, out of control, studs up challenge), or to discourage actions that are blatant breaches of the rules to gain an advantage (such as fouling a player bearing down on goal as the last man). The red card today was neither. It was studs up, but purely accidentally, in a follow-through from kicking the ball! If Chilwell doesn't close him down, he doesn't get sent off, simple as that. So really, all the referee has done is taken an innocuous incident (which lets face it, at worst has given Chilwell a graze down his calf), while permanently changing the dynamic of the game in Chelsea's favour.
The McTominay incident against Spurs was another example of this. McTominay throws his hand back in an attempt to hold off Son and just happens to hit him in the face. If Son brushes that off and keeps chasing McTominay, none of that happens and the goal stands. But because Son goes down, attention is drawn to another otherwise innocuous incident, and leads to the goal being disallowed.
Go back further, and you can even look at our winning penalty against PSG in 2019. Is it a handball? It's debatable, but probably. But what is completely ignored about that incident is that Dalot has hit one of the worst shots you'll ever see, which by its trajectory is clearly headed into row Z. Kimpembe is actually three feet off the ground when it hits his arm. If he hadn't turned or left his arm in the flight of the ball, the ball would have gone out, and probably so would we. But the referee completely ignored the context of the incident and we got, very, very lucky.
There are hundreds of recent penalty incidents where there has clearly not been enough contact for the player to go down, but because contact has been made, the referee for whatever reason feels compelled to give the decision.
I have a similiar gripe about offsides, as the offsite law was put in place to ensure the attacker does not gain an unfair advantage. Being a millimetre offside clearly offers no advantage, but despite the fact technology has forced us to apply the law to an extreme degree, no-one has thought to ask whether it's time to look at the law itself (eg, the whole of an attacker needs to be in front of the defender, or at least a part of the body that can score, as Wenger suggested).
There have been multiple instances of these kind of decisions throughout this season, many with VAR involved, but some not (it is a problem that pre-dates VAR as I've been complaining about this for years). Either out of fear of getting a decision wrong, or just through a complete lack of critical thinking and common sense, referees are applying these laws with no consideration of why they are there in the first place. As a result, tiny bits of accidental contact are having wildly disproportionate influences on games.
It needs to change. Referee's need to be trained to apply common sense when actioning the laws of the game, but this is an increasing rarity. Frankly, I think this would be a thing if referees had to have press conferences (or even just a mike on them like in rugby), in order to justify their decisions. But the profession as a whole needs to reform how they apply these laws, to prevent important games turning on factors that have nothing to do with tactics or footballing ability.
I'm going to continue to bump this thread every time I see an incident that's an example of this to show how common it is. I encourage others to do the same.