West Ham v Olympiacos

[socal lurker]

Once he signals for advantage, the new(ish) direction is that you do not pull it back. The signal indicates that the advantage is actualized, not that he's waiting to see if it will. So in this case, the problem is that the referee signaled advantage much too quickly instead of waiting to see if anything actually materialized.

That’s a practice, not a mandate of the Laws. (That used to be the Law, but that was a long time ago.) Even if it is not best practice, o thing prevents an R from going back if he realizes he made a mistake in applying advantage. The OSP player is a perfect example of when it would be appropriate. If the R sees the pass to the wide open player as the reason there is an advantage (not knowing the player is in OSP), then the R should absolutely pull it back when that pass is made and he is flagged for OS. An R can change any decision so long as play has not been restarted.

(Separately, I still don’t think the one size fits all is the best way to handle timing on advantage. But I also am not taught over here that either mode is the only way to do it properly.)

 

[Jtpetherick1]

Ref plays advantage, looks like he signals it, for a foul on the edge/corner of the box for Olympiacos.
The ball, played by the player as he was fouled, goes to the left wing gets the ball and is flagged immediately for offside.
Surely this means that literally no advantage has been gained and a free kick to Olympiacos is the better option. So no free kick given, and offside is the restart, so they gain nothing.

And midway through added time, ball out for throw in. Balls gone beyond ball boy who throws the new ball at the touchline. Bowen subsequently kicks that ball back away from pitch. He has literally gone off the pitch to do so. Olympiacos player runs off the pitch to redeem and rightly protests abou the kicking of the ball away, thus delaying the restart.
Bowen eventually cautioned, but think it was more because of the confrontation that occured, as the Olympiacos player was cautioned too.
This took about 40 seconds to resolve, and calm down, and yet literally no seconds were added on top of the added 5. Ref blew dead on 5 minutes.

I disagree with this. If you choose to waste your advantage by playing the ball offside, or to a defender, or out of play, that’s on you. An advantage is not a free go - it’s ‘carry on as you were’ - unless the foul caused the ball to go there it’s a play on for me.

That’s not to comment on the quality of the offside, by the way.

 

[socal lurker]

I disagree with this. If you choose to waste your advantage by playing the ball offside, or to a defender, or out of play, that’s on you. An advantage is not a free go - it’s ‘carry on as you were’ - unless the foul caused the ball to go there it’s a play on for me.

Depends on why the R thought there was advantage in the first place. If the player had a direct advant himself and made a poor choice, sure, I agree with you. But if the apparent advantage was the pass to the wide open teammate, and that teammate was in OSP, then there never was an advantage.