\n<\/p>\n
We’ve had two nights of handball controversy, first involving Bayern Munich and now Arsenal.<\/p>\n
In both cases, the ball took a deflection off the body before hitting the arm, and fans have been conditioned into thinking this means there cannot be a penalty.<\/p>\n
What referees actually look for is a clear change of trajectory. Why is that? Because it means the arm position would not create a barrier to the natural direction of the ball.<\/p>\n
If the ball stays on roughly its intended path, then the ball touching the arm takes precedent.<\/p>\n
The penalty given against Alphonso Davies on Tuesday would not have been awarded in the Premier League as the arm was too close to the body.<\/p>\n
For Uefa, the fact that the arm moves out from the body before the ball hits it would trump the small deflection.<\/p>\n
But Ben White’s handball against Atletico was a very clear penalty under Uefa’s definition. The arm was a long way out from the body and came in to make contact with the ball.<\/p>\n
There is some discretion if the arm is being brought in to make the body smaller, but in White’s case it started from so far out, a penalty would be expected.<\/p>\n
The Premier League is more relaxed than Europe even when it comes to deflections before a handball. That said, Arsenal defender Gabriel should have really conceded a penalty at Newcastle earlier this season as his arm, when sliding, was raised very high and the deflection off the body was negligible.<\/p>\n
Would the ball deflecting off White’s shin have caused VAR to stay out of this in the Premier League? Possibly, but the movement of the arm was very clear.<\/p>\n
A definite spot-kick in Europe, borderline for the Premier League.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We’ve had two nights of handball controversy, first involving Bayern<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeepat.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeepat.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeepat.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeepat.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeepat.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zeepat.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeepat.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeepat.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeepat.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeepat.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}