Aleksander Ceferin says UEFA will have “a very serious conversation” about changing the much-criticised handball law after a string of poor decisions.
There have been numerous incidents this season in which fans, players and managers have been left infuriated by the decision to award penalties for handballs. The current law says a penalty will be awarded if the ball strikes the hand when it is in a position which makes the player’s outline “unnaturally bigger”.
Although the laws state that “not every touch of a player’s hand/arm with the ball is an offence”, there have been some hugely contentious calls in which players have been penalised for handling after ricochets or after the ball was blasted into them from close range.
UEFA president Ceferin has now revealed that he has tasked UEFA’s chief of football Zvonimir Boban with heading up a group to look at laws of the game, with handball a particular focus. Asked by Slovenian newspaper Ekipa if he understood the latest rules regarding handball, Ceferin said: “No, I don’t understand. I absolutely do not understand. And something must be done in this area.
“At the end of April, we will form a special group, which will be led by Zvonimir Boban, and we want to have all the greatest coaches and former football players in it.
“One of the priority topics will be handball. The law says that [it is handball] if the player has made himself bigger, but what should he do? How do you make yourself smaller if you fall to the ground or if you jump in the air – the hands are where they are, you can’t always press them to the body."
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He added: “I also spoke with Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, last week about the fact that we all need to do something about this together. Nothing is clear to anyone any more, which is very bad for football, because football by definition is very understandable and very clear.
“We are having a very serious conversation about this, and we are increasingly coming to the conclusion that – once again – no one we are talking to currently understands the handball rule.”
Last month Real Madrid boss Carlo Ancelotti shared a conversation he had with his Liverpool counterpart Jurgen Klopp following a VAR review. The ball had struck Liverpool defender Kostas Tsimikas’ hand in the closing stages of their Champions League tie to prompt a lengthy stoppage neither side had asked for.
Asked post-match what he and Klopp were discussing, he said: "We agreed that it was not a handball, which led us to having a conversation about the penalty from Tuesday night in Manchester that was crazy, really, the penalty against Leipzig."
He added: "We both said that you have to be careful with this (the use of VAR) because this is not football, to be awarding penalties like that in a Champions League.
"I don't think anyone had noticed that there had been an issue, not even Guardiola had appealed that they called that penalty."
