It was soft because he wasn’t in an immediate scoring position and it was an unforced error. In any other area of the pitch it would have been an unremarkable free kick that no-one would have given a second thought about. It was only talked / whinged about because it was in the penalty box and fouls in the box are penalties regardless of whether it was scything down a player in front of an open goal or a mistimed kick next to the 18 yard line.
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Never for a second suggested they were. It was barely a penalty and barely a red card on first viewing IMHO.
I would probably say it was soft if given against us, and I would have been frustrated with our defender, who stuck his leg out, missed the ball, kicked the shins and gave the striker reason to go over, and the ref reason to blow his whistle for a penalty.
It was the sort of penalty I have seen given against us numerous times. Limiting the observation to Harry Kane, he made a bit of a career going over for that sort of thing. Loads of them do.
On our team, compare/contrast Mo Salah. Works hard, dribbles, one of the best players in the Prem. He gets fouled all the time. His instinct is to stay upright and keep battling, which is laudable, but probably adds to the numerous free kicks and penalties he is not given that he otherwise might be.
It was a penalty, all day long, and I’m glad we got it. Szobo changed direction, in the box, the defender kicked him on the shins, in the box. Penalty.
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I remember on MOTD he just kept repeating that it was a very soft penalty…
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I haven’t seen MotD for a while but he used to frequently excuse casual diving.
TBH this penalty was in the other category which annoys me, which is that it is the current rule is that any foul in the box, however trivial, is a penalty kick. Where a genuine goal scoring opportunity is denied then it’s fair enough but there are often penalties given when there are two banks of defenders and no obvious passing opportunities.
The problem is, if you start having two categories of in-box foul it becomes like the current handball rule whereby it is down to a referees personal preference as to whether the player is culpable for the ball touching their arm.
Lineker touched on that in his podcast as well. As he pointed out there no players deliberately tries to touch the ball in the area (with obvious very rare exceptions such as Saurez in the World Cup in SA). However, players do on occasion make a handball more likely to happen. Anyway, that’s a whole different kettle of rabbit holes.
Nonsense
Trying to explain away whats obvious to most people.
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It wasn’t a soft penalty.
It was a definite penalty.
Did you ever play football?
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Imagine
If it was given against us I’d be criticising the defender for being shite.
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This is all true, but contact alone is not sufficient for a foul, even if caused by the defender and so the ref has a decision to make on whether it was incidental or consequential. Regardless of what anyone’s opinion on what the right decision should have been it’s inarguable there is a decision the ref was required to make and one we see go the other way a good amount of time, and one that had it gone the other way a lot of “independent” pundits would have defended it.
Likewise for the disallowed goal in the first minute. The ref is left with a decision on whether Trent’s touch was a result of a deliberate attempt to play the ball. We know how contentious those decisions have been and how confusing the decisions can be. Regardless of what anyone’s opinion on whether it was the right decision we have to acknowledge there was a key decision the ref had that could have gone either way and we got the benefit of doubt over it.
So that is two key decisions both going for us prior to the red card. We know refs concern themselves with the perceived balance of their decisions (not a defense, just a statement of fact) so even if he was absolutely confident in both of those previous decisions he will have known they were decisions that will be analyzed as key ones and so the drive to appear fair rather than being right will likely have been playing on him. This is not a agreement with the idea that this is the right way to ref but an acknowledgement that we know refs to in fact think this way. They would rather appear fair, whatever that means to them, that get it 100% right and find themselves having to defend the 4th and 5th call that went the same way as the first 3.
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That is a different argument though. You can analyze defending by focusing on whether they have given the ref an opportunity to blow their whistle. That doesnt mean the ref blowing his whistle is necessarily the right decision though (as much as there can be a “right” decision).
The decision was correct though.
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In your view…
Was it a penalty?
Yes, just about, but its irrelevant to the point being made. You can have an opinion on a decision while still acknowledging the ref was required to make a decision on it that could have reasonably gone the other way and often would have.
People would do well to remember there doesn’t even have to be contact for a penalty to be awarded. Given that fact I can’t really see why anyone would continue to claim we were somehow fortunate to get the penalty.
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Played in goals for Cheshire mate. Now play every week 2 hours 5 a side. Next?
And that’s the problem. Was it a penalty? well, erm, maybe, ish.
The overwhelming majority of decisions in football fall into a grey area that require subjectivity. That’s not a problem, that is just footbal
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Bang on, what should we do about it? The red team shout cheat, the blue team cheer. Can a middle ground ever be found? Doubt it.
No. They absolutely don’t.
That’s just a convenient method of leeting officials off the hook when they are incorrect. For whatever reason.
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