Touch the ball with your hand inside the box after a goal kick and it’s now a penalty, regardless of whether you meant to put the ball into play. Roberto Rosetti, UEFA’s head of refereeing, spelled that out on Thursday.
Rosetti made the clarification while presenting the season’s refereeing updates in Monaco, and he traced it straight back to last season’s controversy between Barcelona and Atletico Madrid in the Champions League. Atletico defender Marc Pubill touched the ball with his hand to fix it on the pitch, then passed it with his foot, even though goalkeeper Juan Musso had already taken the goal kick.
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VAR came next. Rosetti set out UEFA’s new instructions on the technology, insisting referees must make their own decisions on the pitch and warning that the video official should not become a tool for re-refereeing every clip, according to Spanish radio station“COPE”.
He said: “We want them to be firm. The Video Assistant Referee is a big project, but we want the referees on the pitch to make the decisions. We do not want the Video Assistant Referee to re-referee, and we do not want referees who wait for its intervention. We want clear evidence and clear errors that call for VAR intervention. We do not like microscopic situations.”
The wider package of law updates had already gone out to players, coaches and clubs. UEFA’s aim is to standardise refereeing criteria across its competitions, on and off the pitch, and to bring more consistency to decisions.
Time-wasting at substitutions falls under the changes too. A player who takes more than 10 seconds to leave the pitch can be punished, and there are fresh clarifications on injury situations and how play resumes after goals.
The Vinicius law
UEFA will not apply the so-called Vinicius law in its competitions, unlike at the World Cup, where a player who covers his mouth while speaking to an opponent could be sent off. Rosetti said the referee can instead show a yellow card if he judges the act to be unsporting, with a disciplinary measure possibly to follow.
He said: “We have seen players calling for a red card just because an opponent covers his mouth, and we do not like this.”
VAR will step in, he confirmed, when a player is wrongly identified for a second yellow card. He added: “I am sure that we will see few interventions due to errors in identification in our competitions.”
Only the captain of each side should be talking to the referee, Rosetti stressed. “We do not like players surrounding the referee, and whoever approaches the referee will get a yellow card.”
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