Monday 29 November 2021
“Collina’s heirs” peter out
Leverkusen wins despite a tricky offside rule
By Alex Feuerherdt
In Leipzig, the referee and VAR have to deal with a complicated part of the offside rule, but they make the right decision. In Bochum, a handball rightly goes unpunished, in Stuttgart a man from Mainz uses his fists in accordance with the rules.
The match between RB Leipzig and Bayer 04 Leverkusen (1: 3) only had seven and a half minutes, and Josep Martínez had to get behind him for the first time: After a quick and precise combination via Exequiel Palacios, Patrik Schick and Amine Adli, Moussa Diaby finally overcame the Leipzig goalkeeper. Referee Benjamin Cortus initially gave the goal, but video assistant Felix Zwayer noticed something during the review. Adli found himself on the sidelines with Schicks pass, which could be seen quite well on the TV pictures based on the lawn pattern, even without calibrated lines. But the check in the Cologne video center dragged on.
After two minutes, the referee even went to the monitor himself to conduct an on-field review and took one of his assistants with him for advice. So it was clear: This was not about the offside position as such, but about a trickier problem. That was because Lukas Klostermann from Leipzig had touched the ball when it was on the way from Schick to Adli. Although only very lightly, it was not a question of clarity, but of whether Klostermann had intended to hit the ball or whether it was deflected by him without his active intervention.
According to the rules, there is a difference to the whole: Deliberate play of the ball – “deliberate play” is the English technical term for it – by a defender cancels the offside. Mind you, it only depends on whether this defender wanted to play the ball at all, and not on the how, i.e. not on where the ball landed afterwards. If, on the other hand, a defensive player is hit or grazed by the ball in an uncontrolled manner without having contributed anything himself – the English rule is “deflection” – then this is not the intention. If the ball then gets to an attacker offside, this offside is punishable.
“Deliberate play” or “deflection” from Klostermann?
The point of this distinction, to put it in a somewhat simplified way, is that the defender in “deliberate play” plays or touches the ball of his own free will and is therefore responsible for where the ball then goes. With the “deflection”, however, he does not act on purpose and has no control over where the ball bounces. Whether there is a “deliberate play” or a “deflection” cannot always be clearly stated, some cases take place in the gray area. Fifa has developed four key questions to distinguish it: 1. Does the defender move to the ball, is he acting consciously? 2. Does he have time and various options to act? 3. Is he in control of his action? 4. Is there a large physical distance between the passer and the defender?
If these questions can be answered in the affirmative, at least for the most part, then there is a “deliberate play”, otherwise a “deflection”. In Leipzig, after looking at the pictures, referee Cortus decided that Klostermann had not played the ball on purpose, but had been touched by it in an uncontrolled manner. Adli’s offside position was and remained a criminal offense, which is why the goal was finally annulled. A comprehensible decision, because Klostermann was noticeably surprised by the extension of the ball by Schick and had hardly any reaction time due to the short distance. His left foot only shot forward to attempt a shot when it had already come into contact with the ball. A “deliberate play” looks different.
Losilla handball: criminal or unintentional?
In the match between VfL Bochum and SC Freiburg (2: 1), the referee faced a technically demanding task in which his discretion was also required. After a little more than an hour, Bochum goalkeeper Manuel Riemann parried a shot from Lucas Höler, the subsequent margin from Vincenzo Grifo flew past the goal. Anthony Losilla had deflected the ball slightly – with his right hand. Referee Patrick Ittrich had noticed this handball, but judged it not to be a criminal offense. Therefore, he decided on a corner kick for Freiburg, who would have preferred to be awarded a penalty.
A situation in the gray area. The handball was punishable by the fact that Losilla’s right arm was extended forward when it came into contact with the ball. This could be viewed as an unnatural increase in body area for good reason. Against the punishment, however, spoke that the overall movement of the Bochumers was aimed at avoiding handball: he pulled the left arm close to the ball – with which a handball was more likely than the one away from the ball – close to the body and twisted out of the ball’s trajectory. The right arm stood out clearly from the body, but was not under tension, which is a further indication that the ball, which Losilla had last seen no longer, should not be stopped with it.
In the past season, when evaluating hand games, the focus was still on the pure arm position, so in such a case a penalty would most likely have been awarded. But since the most recent rule change, the criterion of intent has again played the decisive role in the evaluation of hand games. And with that in mind, Patrick Ittrich’s decision is at least justifiable, because Losilla’s turning away suggests that the Bochum-born man did not intend to play the ball with his hand. In the context of discretion, there would have been arguments for a penalty whistle. Either way, there was no clear error that would inevitably have forced the VAR to intervene.
Why the penalty for Stuttgart was conceded again
There was such an intervention, however, in the opening game of the game between VfB Stuttgart and 1. FSV Mainz 05 (2: 1). In the 25th minute, Mainz goalkeeper Robin Zentner came out of his goal after a free kick from Borna Sosa and fisted the ball out of the danger zone. A blink of an eye later, his fists landed on the head of Konstantinos Mavropanos from Stuttgart. Referee Matthias Jöllenbeck first awarded the guests a penalty, but reversed this decision after he had looked at the scene again on the monitor on the edge of the field on the recommendation of his video assistant Thorben Siewer.
Rightly so, because Zentner had first played the ball in a clear and controlled manner, which Mavropanos had tried unsuccessfully to reach with his head. A typical goalkeeping action in which the subsequent collision was to be assessed as an accident and not as a foul. Things would have been different if Hundreds had jumped into the duel with his knees drawn up and hit the man from Stuttgart. But since that was not the case and the Mainz goalkeeper cleared the ball fairly with his fists, the penalty decision was not correct. It was therefore entirely appropriate that the video assistant stopped the referee to review this decision and the referee corrected himself afterwards.