The end of the meeting between Arsenal and PSG, Tuesday evening in the Champions League (2-0), was marked by a possible penalty situation against the Gunners, not awarded by the referee. Putting a coin back into the machine of the endless debate around hand faults in football.
For its first European summit of the season, Paris fell in London on Tuesday evening (2-0). Affected, Luis Enrique’s Parisians were keen to take responsibility for this significant setback, and did not return to one of the second-half incidents in the post-match.
We play the 78th minute. The score was 2-0 for the Gunners, when Italian defender Riccardo Calafiori blatantly touched the ball with his hand, in his own area. However, Slavko Vincic does not flinch. When reading law 12 of the official regulations of the IFAB, an organization which governs the laws of the game, we can read two possible situations of whistleable hand faults.
Arm position judged based on body movement
The first: “It is a foul if a player deliberately touches the ball with his arm or hand, for example by moving his arm or hand towards the ball.” Which is not the case here, since on Bradley Barcola’s shot blocked by William Saliba, the Italian tries to withdraw his arm so as not to touch him.
The second: “It is a foul if a player touches the ball with his arm or hand having artificially increased the surface covered by his body”, that is to say “when the position of his arm or hand is not a consequence of the movement of his body in that specific situation or is not justifiable by such movement.” Here again, Calafiori’s reflex does not go in this direction.
The referee therefore rightly sided with the regulations – which have changed a lot in recent years and are not always easy to understand for followers, even diligent ones. The hand situation should not lead to a penalty for PSG.
Romain Daveau Journalist RMC Sport
