Now We Ignore More

Are you used to losing all your faith into UEFA refereeing and parts of their referee committee? Yes? Then the following won't be anything new to you. No? Then be prepared, chain yourself to your chair to avoid that you will fall from it.

In Tuesday's UEFA Champions League match between Manchester United and Bayer Leverkusen, the Slovenian referee team headed by Damir Skomina had a decisive blackout in the first goal scored by the English side.

Assistant Referee 1 Matej Žunič obviously failed to detect two offside positions in this situation. The first one, by Patrice Evra, was surely hard to see and could be ignored considering the "benefit of the doubt". Evra then passed the ball into the penalty area and found his team-mate Wayne Rooney, who scored with a volley. Rooney was clearly onside, no doubt. But what about the ManU forward Valencia having stood on the goalline and having clearly been closer to the goalline than the 2nd last defender? 

In the context of Law 11 on offside, the following definitions apply.

• "interfering with play" means playing or touching the ball passed or touched by a team-mate

This does not apply for ManU forward Valencia. He did not play or touch the ball.

• "interfering with an opponent" means preventing an opponent from playing or being able to play the ball by clearly obstructing the opponent's line of vision or challenging an opponent for the ball

This does apply for ManU forward Valencia. He clearly prevented his opponent - in this case goalkeeper Leno - from being able to play the ball by challenging his opponent for the ball. Challenging an opponent for the ball requires physical interference (forward Valencia obviously touched goalkeeper Leno) and requires a playing distance of maximum 1 or 1,5 metres. Well, no doubt that this was by far less than a metre.

Here we can already stop going through the offside law. This goal was clearly scored from an active offside position. Practically, it is not only Žunič' mistake, but also Damir Skomina's and specially AAR1 Slavko Vinčić's error. It was not only a clear offside position - it was an obvious foul by Valencia on Leno in the goalkeeper's "territory area", i.e. the 5m-box. Slavko Vinčić looked somewhere else, probably he controlled Rooney, the player who received the ball. Well, Skomina had to do so, too, so that sharing responsibility certainly did not work properly in this situation. A quite clear error, isn't it? For sure, this was an error of perception that is human and can happen. So I stress it's not my intention to blame the officials for that too much.

Now the story starts: Pierluigi Collina and parts of his fealty have de facto ruled the decision to allow this goal as correct.

But why? There are several possible reasons.

1. It might be that Mr Collina has not understood the offside law. Well, that would be embarrassing. He indeed should have read my post from 30 June 2013.

2. Mr Collina has not understood that people exist who want to understand referees' decisions, who want to have an honest committee that analyzes mistakes in a clear and understandable manner putting positive pressure on their officials to learn from them and to improve in future. By the way, clubs and players do expect that as well.

3. Elite referee teams savour more protection than other referees.

4. Someone in the committee believes he has to protect his protégé.

5. We are facing a World Cup. We are currently being in the hot phase of the qualification for 2014 FIFA World Cup - and this does not only count for national teams, but for the referees as well. In fact there are more European referees who would deserve a participation in this tournament than available places allowed by FIFA. Every 7.9 means a minus on the referee's and assistant referee's palmarès, that's pretty clear.

Choose the reason you like most, please.

At any rate, I have lost every faith into the current management.