One of the most annoying and childish fouls I think is pulling an opponents’ shirt to stop him getting away with the ball.
One thing I should point out is that pulling opponent’s shirts, does not appear anywhere in the Laws of the Game.
It does however fall under the heading of holding an opponent, which has a number of punishments. some of which can have a huge effect on a game.
It is a direct free kick offence, which means that it would be a penalty if committed inside the home penalty area.
If it broke up a promising attack it would warrant a yellow card and if it denied a goal scoring opportunity the player would be sent off.
There is one other punishment I would like to see added. This is where the back of the shirt collar is pilled, rather than the back or front of the shirt itself.
We saw this in the Euro 2020 when the shirt was grabbed at the back of the neck and the player running forward could have been strangled, a yellow card was shown, probably for unsporting
behaviour or dangerous play, but it certainly didn’t seem severe enough.
The question may be asked, why isn’t shirt pulling always penalised?
There are a couple of reasons at least for this, one is a note that appeared a couple of seasons ago in the Laws of the Game book.
It wasn’t in the Laws but in one of a number of sections in the back of the book. It’s called the Glossary of Football Terms and says, ‘A holding offence only occurs when a player’s contact with an opponent’s body or equipment impedes the opponent’s movement’.
For pulling shirts, this means if the opponent is still able to run on unencumbered or can carry out doing what he intended to do.
This slight relaxing of the Law did well in the Euros 20/20. Don’t stop for every little infringement.
The other reason it goes unpunished is that the referee may be unsighted. We can take the example of Newcastle’s match against Chelsea.
Chelsea’s Trevoh Chalobah clearly pulled the front of Jacob Murphy’s shirt in the penalty area, but both players had their backs to the referee.
A penalty could have given them a point, so no doubt Newcastle manager, Eddie Howe, was thinking, where is the VAR when you need him?
By Dick Sawdon Smith
