The Ref Stop

DOGSO in the penalty area situation

K

Kent Ref

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A referee mate told me about a game he reffed last week.

Red player is 2 yards from the goaline centrally and it about to shoot. Goalkeeper is nowhere near to make a save.

Blue player makes an attempt for the ball but ends up fouling the red player.

Ref gives the penalty and a yellow card, as per LOTG.

Red player takes the penalty and the keeper saves it.

His and my question was this.

How does a penalty and yellow card help the innocent team? How is a penalty facing a keeper the same as a shot from 2 yards and an empty net?

I know this would make the DOGSO in the area more difficult to manage but a virtual certain goal denied needs more than a penalty and a yellow IMHO.
 
The Ref Stop
The reverse argument from a defender would be how would a penalty that has an 8 out of 10 chance of scoring is fair when an accidental foul happens in the corner of the penalty area near the goal line when attacker is moving away from goal with virtually no chance of scoring? We are going from say 1% chance of scoring to 80% chance of scoring. In your friend's scenario we have gone from 99% chance of scoring to 80% chance which statically is a much fairer outcome.

Every situation that requires a referee decision is different. The laws can't prescribe an exact 'rebalancing' of all situation unless there are several hundred or thousands of pages of laws having a different 'punishment' for every slight variations of a foul. We don't want that, so sometimes the outcome is not as fair as we would like it to be.

Other examples I can make, moving the location of a deliberate handball by a few inches can mean a huge difference, a FK or a PK. Or a DOGSO outside of area with a deliberate foul (not attempt to play the ball) in the last minute of the game clearly not fair to the attacking team even though the defender is sent off.
 
Kent Ref said:
In the senario i stated what about the referee being allowed to award a goal?
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But you don’t know for a fact that a goal was going to be scored. Odds are he would have, but you don’t know for certain. Just like odds are higher for an attacker to score a pen than they are to miss. But they still miss!
 
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Kent Ref said:
In the senario i stated what about the referee being allowed to award a goal?
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I was going to mention this in my post that it has been discussed here a few times before. In football we don't want to award a goal unless it is 100% certainty (not 99.999%). And the only time its 100% is when the whole of the ball has actually crossed the whole of the line between the posts and under the bar.

Search youtube for defenders attackers missing an empty goal from less than two yards and you would find plenty examples.
 
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Kent Ref said:
In the senario i stated what about the referee being allowed to award a goal?
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Because the laws don't allow for that, and as already has been said plenty of top level strikers have missed open goals. I give you this as one of the most memorable.
 
Kent Ref said:
As the attacker was about to kick the ball into the empty net. A goal was about to be scored.
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I am basing this on you saying the decision was correct. Meaning that in order for it to be a caution instead of a dismissal it must have been an attempt to play the ball.

Meaning that in some alternative universe. The tackle might have been successful, meaning a goal wasn't 100% guarenteed.

Again I wasn't there.

"Denying a goal or an obvious goal-scoring opportunity (DOGSO)​

Where a player commits an offence against an opponent within their own penalty area which denies an opponent an obvious goal-scoring opportunity and the referee awards a penalty kick, the offender is cautioned if the offence was an attempt to play the ball or a challenge for the ball; in all other circumstances (e.g. holding, pulling, pushing, no possibility to play the ball etc.), the offending player must be sent off."
 
Kent Ref said:
As the attacker was about to kick the ball into the empty net. A goal was about to be scored.
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Ronnie Rosenthal was about to kick it into the open goal in the video I shared, but the end result wasn't a goal.

We can only referee to the laws that actually exist. There is no concept of a penalty goal, and the law is clear that a challenge for the ball that commits an OGSO in the penalty area can only be a caution.
 
OGSO is OGSO whatever the flavour. The principle is that an OGSO hasn't been denied because the OGSO still exists in the form of a penalty. And whilst I understand the OP and probably attackers POV I think it's a fair principle, save for the very very rare outliers as described in OP.
 
Can we really handle any more subjectivity about OGSO than we already have? When DOGSO was more subjective, it didn’t work because R’s found excuses not to give it. As a R, I hate the idea of having some magic threshold where we move from a PK to a goal because it is sufficiently obvious the goal would have been scored.
 
If you feel the defender had a chance to make a fair tackle and win the ball, then this was not a certain goal anyway and a penalty and yellow card was a fair result. If you feel a fair tackle was impossible then you have the right to decide there was no attempt to play the ball and give the penalty and a red card.
 
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