The defender holding problem

antijoke

antijoke

antijoke

Caporegime
Joined
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So this seems a very hot topic recently and especially in light of last weekend, but how do FIFA/UEFA/FA go about sorting this problem out?

Do they simply make a rule that it will not acceptable to gold people in the box like we've seen and will be a book able offence with a penalty awarded to eradicate this problem?

The problem there is it requires consistency from refs and no bottling out of decisions.

So what do we think? Do they rule with a rod iron to get rid of the awful practice from football or do they just let it carry on.?
 
They outlaw it and the opposition players will hold the defenders shirts, fall over and claim they were fouled. The biggest issue is cheating but UEFA/FIFA won't address that because it's the attacking players that provide most of the excitement in the game that do it the most.
 
There's nothing that can be done about it. I mentioned in regards to the Leicester - West Ham game that this is 1 area where you've got to have sympathy for officials. At any given corner you've got 15+ players in the box and you can guarantee there will be multiple fouls, both from the defensive players and the attackers. How can officials keep track of what's going on at every corner?

If a ref sees one particular player clearly fouling another then he has to award either the free-kick to the defensive side or the penalty to the attacker but there's always going to be inconsistency because it's impossible to expect him to see everything.

I've seen people call for video technology for this but what do you do if you've got a situation where there are multiple incidents at a set-play and you've got both attackers blocking off or pulling back defenders as well as defenders pulling attackers? Which foul does the video ref award?
 
BaZ87 said:
There's nothing that can be done about it. I mentioned in regards to the Leicester - West Ham game that this is 1 area where you've got to have sympathy for officials. At any given corner you've got 15+ players in the box and you can guarantee there will be multiple fouls, both from the defensive players and the attackers. How can officials keep track of what's going on at every corner?

If a ref sees one particular player clearly fouling another then he has to award either the free-kick to the defensive side or the penalty to the attacker but there's always going to be inconsistency because it's impossible to expect him to see everything.

I've seen people call for video technology for this but what do you do if you've got a situation where there are multiple incidents at a set-play and you've got both attackers blocking off or pulling back defenders as well as defenders pulling attackers? Which foul does the video ref award?
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As for the last point just retake the set play, if it occurs in open play though quite a bit more difficult.
 
Purdy said:
As for the last point just retake the set play, if it occurs in open play though quite a bit more difficult.
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Retaking the set-play achieves nothing though. There will be more pushing and pulling going on from the retake - we'd have just wasted 5 minutes while the ref looks at 5 different views and found he can't award a foul in 1 direction.
 
BaZ87 said:
Retaking the set-play achieves nothing though. There will be more pushing and pulling going on from the retake - we'd have just wasted 5 minutes while the ref looks at 5 different views and found he can't award a foul in 1 direction.
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If it occurs again, or on the first time just book them all, pulling a shirt or grabbing them to stop them anywhere else on the pitch would be a card
 
the rules are there just the refs do not use them.

If all fouls were booked as they should, yes there would be a week or two with a lots of bookings, but it would stop, when the teams lose half there first team on suspensions.
 
Personally I think if an attacker and defender are both pulling each others shirts you should just let the incident go. If the defender starts dragging the attacking player to the ground or grabs him round the neck as happened with Huth in the Leicester vs West Ham game then that's a bit different, but what are you supposed to do if both players are committing fouls?
 
Its almost impossible to accurately decide who is doing what when it comes to shirt pulling. One guy is pulling the others shirt on the other side of their body to the ref and that player has hold of his shirt where the ref can see. Both are doing it so what should happen?

Defender pulls attackers shirt its a penalty and almost certain goal. Attacker does it and its an irrelevant free kick in literally the most worthless place to get one. Completely unequal punishments for same offence.

Defender gets away with some shirt pulling and he perhaps saves a goal. Attacker gets away with it and perhaps scores a goal. Pretty even outcomes.

It makes sense to let it happen and just leave it to the ref to penalise when its super obvious.

How do you handle 20 odd players in the box anyway. I would bet that every time you see a penalty given for pushing, shirt pulling etc you could look at the rest of the players in the box at the time and give another 2 penalties and another few free kicks to the defenders. How do you decide what should be given. 1 out of the 3 penalties or one out of the many free kicks.
 
Two things I think would really improve football as a spectacle could be achieved by exactly the same thing. It should be announced at the start of the season that anyone caught pulling a shirt or swearing a referee will be booked. Both practices would die out over night, yes you would get some inconsistencies around free/kicks and penalties initially but that wouldn't be an issue once everyone stopped doing it! for fear of being sent off or conceding free kicks/penalties.

I'm also a fan of video evidence being used after a game to punish things that have been missed as again this would reduce incidents during the game.
 
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