Question Number: 28760

Law 13 - Free Kicks 9/21/2014

RE: Select Under 11

Nate of Spokane, Washington United States asks...

The goalkeeper carried the ball outside the box. I called the DFK for the handball. The kicker did not ask for ten yards, but it was within potential goalscoring distance, so I told the kicker to wait for the whistle and set the wall ten yards back. I know that by Law 13, the defenders are required to retreat ten yards whether the kicker asks for it or not. The attacker took the free kick before I was ready, and it went into the goal. I disallowed the goal, because the ball should not have been put into play yet. When I did blow the whistle for play to start, no goal resulted. I heard someone yelling at me from the sidelines, but I don't know or care which bench it was from. Was I not correct?

Answer provided by Referee Joe McHugh

Hi Nate
Once the referee intervenes at a free kick then the restart becomes ceremonial and it is on the whistle. So your decision was correct.
Now what happened is that something went wrong with the mechanics.
1. If the attacking team wanted to take a quick free kick then that should be facilitated. That is done by simply not getting ''involved'' with the defending team.
2. Once a referee decides that the kick is going to be ceremonial then he should delay the setting up of the kick. That just means taking time to start setting up the restart which includes standing over the ball and clearly indicating to the kicker/s that the restart is not to happen until the whistle sounds. To do that the referee will raises his whistle and point at it and state clearly it is on the whistle.
3. If a player wilfully ignores the referees instruction and takes the kick before the whistle then a caution might be appropriate. At U11 it might just be lack of knowledge so advice might be appropriate.

Answer provided by Referee Richard Dawson

Once you implicitly intervened and requested the teams wait for a whistle then nothing occurs until you have indeed signaled play back in with a whistle.

The key issue here is the opposition keeper has the ball, you need to take that ball into your possession and when you get eye contact with the opposing team who are wanting to take the free kick you CLEARLY indicate to them we are waiting for a whistle to restart play and put the ball at the spot of where the keeper left the PA as this is indeed a BLADE OF GRASS restart.

The right for the team to take a free kick quickly after a foul against them is sacrosanct but in this case I too could be inclined to make it ceremonial in nature! I suppose if the dots all connect and you do allow a quick restart the key factors would have to be
(1) The actions of the keeper are not cautionable just a careless foul
(2)The restart location is critical (just outside the PA boundary line}
(3) The ball is made available so a restart can occur ! You do not want an attacker trying to grab the ball from the keeper's hands causing a confrontation. If this is going on I think you must intervene.
(4) you must have done nothing whereby your presence or actions have indicated you are involved in the proceedings except as a neutral bystander.

One can caution show a yellow card to the over eager kicker as they have displayed a form of USB but u-11 this is a teaching scenario for you and them apparently and to do so could be harsh. That said you were correct to disallow the goal and as you say the chatter from the touchlines was a verbal release of disappointment of the outcome no longer in their favour!

Answer provided by Referee Gary Voshol

I'm not sure why you felt the need to hold up the kick. Even though the opponents should be back 10 yards, teams should have the right to put the ball down and restart quickly. Perhaps there were other considerations that you made, but simply because it's a potential scoring situation does not make it necessary to have a ceremonial restart.

However, once you did that, then the kicker does have to wait for the whistle to restart. So you were correct to call off the goal and pull the ball back for a whistled restart.