Beach Ball Scores: Refereeing in the English Premier League
Alright, I know you haven't heard of this yet ... Manchester United is signing a brand new player before the Liverpool match. He has a 100 percent record against the team from Merseyside. Not too much is known about this player who scored recently within 40 seconds of coming on the field. He has taken the footballing world by storm. When you talk about players who can change games, you talk about the brilliant Beach-Ball Balloon.
Ever since the bizarre beach-ball goal at the Stadium of Light last week, which resulted in Liverpool losing a vital 3 points at Sunderland, football fans and the experts have been trying to make sense of it all. It seems incredible that the goal was awarded and everyone who has been asked about it has been quick to quote the rule out of FIFA 'Laws of the Game’ book which states:
“The referee stops, suspends or abandons the match because of outside interference of any kind. The match is restarted with a dropped ball.”
It is one of the most basic rules of the game. Everyone from the bloke on the street to the greatest footballing minds agrees that the goal should not have stood. This ‘unanimous agreeing’ in itself is bizarre and terribly rare in football. Liverpool was bad in that game and really can’t blame the beach ball but what I am most intrigued about is, how was it that the referee did not know about this rule?
Referees are usually picked on by everyone after each game. The losing team almost always wants to partly put the blame on the referee and dare I say, usually they have a point. The referees however, can’t be held 100 percent responsible for bad decisions because most of these decisions are a matter of interpretation. They are subjective and usually a shade of grey and annoying when given against your team. That actually makes every game even more interesting.
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