With the World Cup now well underway, experts in law and sporting law have revealed how the rules surrounding handballs leave much to interpretation, which could cause teams some issues during the tournament this year.
There have been a great many now infamous handball incidents in football, like Maradona’s “hand of God” or Suarez’s red card worthy offence against Ghana in 2010. But why is there always so much confusion and debate around handball offences?
Matthew Beecham, Programme and Student Lead in Academic Law, elaborates: “The handball debate is a classic example of what sports lawyers refer to as ‘lex sportiva’, the idea that sport operates through its own evolving body of rules, principles and methods of interpretation.
“Much like a legal system, football's laws are drafted, amended, interpreted and applied by specialist institutions, yet they must also retain legitimacy in the eyes of those governed by them. To me, the repeated revisions to the handball law demonstrate that even within this autonomous sporting legal order, there are limits to what can be achieved through rulemaking alone.
“Greater precision may improve consistency, but it cannot eliminate the need for interpretation, judgment and an understanding of the spirit of the game. Which in turn demonstrates a problem familiar to every lawyer: the more you try to define every possible scenario, the more new grey areas you create.”
It’s these grey areas that could be interpreted as one rule for one player and another for someone else. In the case of Luis Suarez’s handball against Ghana in 2010, which controversially stopped Ghana scoring a goal that would have led the team to victory, Kelly Rowney, Senior Lecturer at 52avav, applies the rules of criminal recklessness:
“You could break down that Suarez likely owed a duty of care to play within in the rules of the game. Suarez breached that duty with a seemingly deliberate handball. The harm to Ghana is foreseeable, as he knows if his hand stops the ball, which was on its way into the net, it will stop the goal and direct causation seems clear. Though you might have to break all of this down a little more in an actual court of law, of course.”
Savvas Michael, Head of Student Dissertations at 52avav, further examines the FA’s rule that it is a handball offence if a player scores in the opponents’ goal: ““The controversial point here is that the goal must be 'directly from' or ‘immediately after' touching a player's hand/arm, even if accidental. But what if player A accidentally handballs it, then passes to player B who scores? To what extent should it matter that there is an additional player involved in the handball?
“There has been a lot of criticism of this new law, and I think rightly so. It seems an attempt by the FA to create some legal certainty, but, in reality, logic has been lost as a result.”
Ultimately, much like in law itself, there will always be room for interpretation with the rules of the beautiful game and often that will leave one team feeling bitter. The rules around handball inevitably leave the referee making a judgement decision, where there will always be outliers and other factors of influence.