I have been challenged by my use of "intent" with how I have interpreted the GK handball situation. So allow me to clarify. And for those who want to move on from this, please bear with me. I'm not trying to annoy anyone, however I believe I have an obligation to support my reasoning with a sound understanding of the laws and the way they are written.
The language surrounding a Denial of a Goal Scoring opportunity and what the punishment is supposed to be for every scenario is not as straight forward as many of you are making it sound. It does not appear that the specific situation of a goalkeeper being outside the box and committing a handball does not seem to be explicitly addressed in the laws. In this case it would default to the handball rule generally :
www.premierleague.com
As referenced here, as it pertains to handball, the term deliberate and non-deliberate is used to determine whether it would rise to the level of a red card or not :
As seen in previous seasons, when a player denies the opposing team a goal or an obvious goal-scoring opportunity by committing a deliberate handball offence, the player is sent off wherever the offence occurs.
In addition to this, when a player now denies the opposing team a goal or an obvious goal-scoring opportunity by committing a non-deliberate handball offence and the referee awards a penalty kick, the offender is cautioned.
So right there, it is quite clear that the only way for a handball that denied a goal scoring opportunity to result in an automatic red card is if the handball was determined to be
"deliberate".
So
in addition to deciding whether or not it was in fact (by their own standards) a denial of a GSO, they would also have to determine whether or not they would have deemed it "deliberate". So essentially, there is a two-step decision process that they would have to go through in order to send off the keeper. First, a denial of a GSO, which according to the official reports, they decided it
wasn't. Now, we all disagree, and rightly so, but that is very clearly part of their process and part of what prevented them from correcting the error.
But even if they had in fact concluded that it
was a denial of a GSO, then they would have to also consider whether or not the touch by the goalkeeper was "deliberate". So when I brought up the GK's intent, I was met with resistance about how his perceived intent was irrelevant. That since it was a DOGSO, it would be an automatic red card.
Apparently those who challenged me on this don't know the law, because his intent is merely another word for deliberate, which is in the law.
So given the GK's close proximity to the edge of the box, given the fact that his body was inside the box and he only reached out over the line with his arm extended to swat it, that would be hard to conclude that the handball itself was "deliberate' which would be required to rise to the level of a red card.
So it was not a deliberate handball since it was on the edge of the box and the keeper is allowed to do that inside the box. Common sense should prevail in situations like this, but unfortunately VAR and its failures have skewed the way in which we interpret and react to these kinds of situation.
So by their own standards, even if it in fact denied a goal scoring opportunity, they would have to subjectively determine his "intent" to determine if it was deserving of a red card. For it to be a red card, they would have to determined that it was deliberate. And I know many of you would argue it was deliberate, that he knew exactly where he was and did what he did anyway. But that's open to interpretation, and subjective. And more importantly, that's not what you were arguing when you tried to lecture me on the rules. You were arguing that I was wrong in even considering his intent. When in reality, to deny that such a consideration exists, you have proven that you don't know the rules and what goes into such a decision.
My very relevant argument was that football is played in real-time, not in slow-motion, and what the keeper did there was primarily out of instinct. We can't assign "intent" based upon our own subjective and non descriptive standards. Whether or not that was a deliberate handball depends on how you interpret what happened. But it is not without consideration of the goalkeeper's intent, which many of you did not believe it did and tried to lecture me on how I didn't know the rules lol.
I argued that it would have been harsh to determine that was a deliberate handball since he indeed got his body back inside the box before reaching out. That action of retreating back into the box shows and getting back before reaching out only speaks to his intent of
trying to get back into legal position before swatting it away. It was too close to the edge of the box for that to be considered a deliberate handball. So even if it was determined to be a denial of a GSO, which it wasn't, they would then have to conclude that it was deliberate. So that's two levels of "red tape" that they had to get through, both of which are wildly subjective and open to interpretation, in order for them to correct the error.
That was my entire point. And I believe that I have been unfairly maligned for having this very justifiable position. For those who came at me and acted like I don't know the rules, I think I have acquitted myself fully here and that in fact it is you who didn't know the rules, didn't realize that both the denial of a GSO and whether or not a handball was deliberate are part of the decision-making process and that both are apparently wildly subjective and open to interpretation. My unique position that it was, in my estimation, a denial of a GSO, but that it wasn't a deliberate handball due to being on the edge of the box is entirely justifiable and frankly far more nuanced and representative of having a sound understanding of not only the way that the current law is written but also the spirit of the law that provides for common sense and an evaluation of intent in such a situation.