But that's nothing like what happened. The closest comparison would be someone responding to the ref's whistle, taking a free kick to a teammate and the teammate deciding to pick the ball up instead of shooting. It never happens.
That is precisely what ties the two incidents together. "It never happens". In both cases the referee sees the thing that "never happens" and he can't get his stupid head round it and so he brings the whole thing to a crashing halt.
It's deeply symptomatic of the modern refereeing condition. Not bias. Just stupidity.
It does happen though that is the point. How often do you see a teammate kick the ball in the direction of the player who is going to take the free kick so he can position the ball? How often do you see a player go to take a quick throw-in decide it is not on and throw it to the regular throw-in taker?
I can think of three incidents straightaway involving Liverpool that show how nuanced restarts are.
The first one involved Attwell and was one of the reasons he got demoted from the select group.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2012/feb/15/stuart-attwell-dropped-premier-league-refereesLater that year he awarded Liverpool a highly controversial goal against Sunderland. He had awarded the Black Cats a free-kick inside their own half and Michael Turner touched the ball back to Simon Mignolet, apparently for the goalkeeper to take the set piece.
But Attwell ruled the ball active, allowing Fernando Torres to steal in and set up Dirk Kuyt to finish into an unguarded net.
Now by the letter of the law, Attwell was correct. However how many times do you see a player kick the ball to where the free kick taker is going to take the free kick from.
Secondly was the Derby game when the ball was smashed against Ferguson and ended up going in.
Thirdly we used to have a corner routine in which a player would make it look like he was going to take the corner put his foot on the ball and then leave it for a teammate mate who would then dribble the ball into the area. IIRC we tried it twice the first time the ref blew up the second it worked. That shows the ambiguity of when a restart takes place.
For me with the Arsenal game I think it was a mistake however that is far more ambiguous than the Areola incident. In the Arsenal one there is a level of ambiguity because it is a restart. The Areola one is from open play.
Recent Posts
