One Season Too Late! (from Ed)

The Dallas Cup is a prestigious international youth soccer tournament (U13 to U19) held every year since 1980 in Dallas, Texas. Founded by Ron Griffith and the Texas Longhorns Soccer Club, it has grown in stature over the years, and has featured teams from the World’s top clubs such as Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal, Real Madrid, Sao Paulo, Eintract Frankfurt to name just a few. Many now- famous players have participated in previous Dallas Cups, including David Beckham, Wayne Rooney and Landon Donovan.

(Actually it is not in the City of Dallas any longer, the games are played in Frisco at Pizza Hut Park, the home of MLS team FC Dallas, and in Richardson, but that is neither here nor there.)

I have been refereeing games in the Dallas Cup since the first one, and for most of the following years. In those early years, I would referee at the older age group levels, but in recent years I have been doing just one or two games with the younger boys in the U-13 and U-14 divisions.

During one of the U-14 games I refereed last year, between a team from Costa Rica and one from the US, an incident occurred that I had never before encountered in all my previous 35 years of refereeing at all levels.  Two players collided with each other while running for the ball. It was not a foul by either player, but one of the boys was winded by the collision and fell on his knees having some difficulty in breathing normally. I immediately stopped the game and allowed him to be seen to by a team official. Of course the game had to be re-started with dropped ball. Since at the time the ball was in possession of the defending team about 25 yards out from their goal, a player from the other team stepped forward to play the ball, uncontested, back to the opposing goalkeeper. He kicked the ball high, the goalkeeper misjudged it and the ball went over his head and into the goal. Unfortunately, I had no alternative but to award the goal, as there was no other remedy in Law. Yes, I know I could have probably made something up, such as the ball slipped out of my hand, or I wasn’t ready or some such excuse and had the dropped ball re-done, but it would have been wrong. Of course there were protests from the players about the goal, fairness etc. with many of the spectators upset and yelling. Then I noticed the coaches talking about it, and sportingly they had agreed to let the aggrieved team score an uncontested goal from the ensuing kickoff. Also the player who put the ball in the net from the dropped ball was substituted out. As it turned out, this was not an issue in the end, because the Costa Rican team ended up winning by 5-2.

Now imagine my amazement when I saw this item on the Agenda of the International Football Association Board, at their Annual Meeting held in England last weekend. The IFAB is the group responsible for the Laws of the Game, and any changes or modifications must be approved by them by 6 votes out of 8. FIFA has 4 of these votes with the Football Associations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland having one vote each.

 

“Law 8 – The Start and Restart of Play To discuss a new text proposal regarding the restart of play with a dropped ball (submitted by The Football Association).

PRESENT TEXT
Infringements and sanctions The ball is dropped again:

 

PROPOSED TEXT

Infringements and sanctions The ball is dropped again: … If the ball enters the goal: • if a dropped ball is kicked directly into the opponents’ goal, a goal kick is awarded • if a dropped ball is kicked directly into the teams’ own goal, a corner kick is awarded to the opposing team.

REASON

There have been a number of occasions where goals have been scored from ‘uncontested’ dropped balls. This has put a great deal of pressure on the referee as he has to allow the goal to stand. We then have the unseemly situation where the opposition allow the team to score from the kick off without any players trying to stop them in order to rebalance the game.”

This is exactly what happened in that match at the Dallas Cup! Are FIFA or the IFAB watching my games? Who knows, but it seems as though this must have happened a few other times as well. At least I can take some comfort in that my decision to award the goal was correct according to FIFA. Anyway the amendment was approved, so this type of thing cannot occur again.

I only wish the IFAB had decided to do this a year ago!

Comments

[Dustin]

Forgive my ignorance but if an IFAB amendment is approved that means it is put into effect immediately or at some later date. I have games this weekend I must know.

[Dustin: Usually they take effect as of July 1, or at the start of the next playing season. Don't change anything until we get official notification and instructions from USSF. EB]

[Joe Tichy]

I believe I read that they will go into effect June 1 this year to accommodate European competitions that begin in June.

[Brian Smith-White]

This is a logical extension of the long-standing response to a ball thrown directly into the goal during a throw in restart. Prior to the IFAB effort to retain referee authority by legislating that the referee, and the referee alone, decides to stop play for an injury (rather than the players deciding and then kicking the ball out) one usual restart was the ball thrown to the opponents. I am sure that the ball was thrown directly into the goal at least once.