What is hand and what is not?

“The hands are the battle horse of every year,” warned Medina Cantalejo, president of the referees, in August. And on the one hand there has been quite a stir this weekend. Iglesias Villanueva (VAR) warned Melero López that the ball had hit Marco Asensio’s arm after coming off his chest. A penalty was called and it cost Madrid two points. The player assures that precisely this action is “the definition of no hand that they explain to us at the beginning of the season”. Now, the question of every year resurfaces: What is hand and what is not? We resort to the talk that Asensio refers to at the beginning of the season, which the CTA gave to all the LaLiga teams and the media with the same examples.

Actions that DO count as hands

volunteer hand. That action when a player voluntarily touches the ball with his hand or arm. How to make a movement towards the ball with the intention of touching it. One of the examples that the referees gave to all the LaLiga teams this summer was Osasuna-Real Madrid last season. Chimy Ávila dived to the ground to try to steal the ball, while moving across the pitch, the red footballer intentionally touches the ball with his hand to take possession of it.

Hand in unnatural position. It is considered an infraction when the footballer’s arm or hand occupies more space, becoming larger and running the risk of cutting off a pass or shot. It will be considered an infraction if the arm is clearly away from the body or if they are at or above the shoulder.

What happens if the ball hits an arm in an unnatural position that bounces off your own body? It is hand and penalty. Last season an action of this type happened in Leganés-Las Palmas. Coco lunged to cut off a pass with an arm over her shoulder. The ball bounced off his foot onto his hand in an unnatural position. Undiano Mallenco, a member of the Arbitration Committee, explained how this action is interpreted: “First it hits his leg and then his arm, which was raised and occupying a space before the ball hit his foot. The fact that I hit him earlier in the leg does not matter to us, because the arm was already separated and in a high position before. It’s a penalty.” At Real Madrid-Girona, Asensio is going to cut a cross with his left arm raised. He first hits his chest and bounces off the arm with which he gets bigger. The referees’ decision was to award a penalty, which is consistent with the criteria explained by Undiano in the summer.

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Immediate hand to goal, whether accidental or not. Any player who scores a goal with his hand or immediately after being hit in the arm, even if totally inadvertently and unintentionally, is considered an offense and must be disallowed. In this rule there are several keys: it has to be immediately and committed by the player who scores. That is to say, if the footballer who performs an assist has involuntarily grazed the ball on his arm (if a hand is voluntary it is always punishable) and then he scores another goal, that goal will go up. But if the involuntary hand is committed by the scorer himself, it is no longer valid.

Actions that are NOT considered a hand

Hands in natural position that are close to the body. The action in which the ball hits a nearby arm or hits the body is not considered an infraction. The arms do not have to be completely attached to the body, soccer is a sport in movement. Therefore, the referee must decide if the position is in correlation with the movement that he is making. That is, the referee will not whistle if the arm is close to the body and does not grow larger to occupy an unnatural space.

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Hands after the ball played by the footballer himself. What referees call ‘Play the ball’. It refers to when a soccer player deliberately plays a ball and ends up touching his own arm. In this, the concept of playing and deliberately must be taken into account. The intention to create a new action with a header that accidentally lands on your arm because of the movement. Deliberately playing a ball is not the same as trying to block or stop it. This is a complex concept that can cause problems when it comes to differentiating it from the example of Marco Asensio against Girona. The Balearic on that occasion with his silhouette (remember that he has his left arm over his shoulder) tries to get bigger and occupy space. The ball hits Asensio and then bounces off an arm that was in an unnatural position from the start. In that case, Asensio does not try to play deliberately, but tries to block and stop the ball with his body. Therefore, it cannot be considered Play the ball.

Hand coming from a clearance by a teammate. It is not considered an infringement if the ball comes directly from the teammate’s clearance and the ball unexpectedly reaches another defender, hitting him in the hand or arm.

Hand in attack. Here are two situations where the referee will not call a foul. The first, if there is a goal and the involuntary handball is from a teammate and not from the player who scores, it is not considered an infraction. The second: that it is the player who scores the goal who commits an accidental handball, but not immediately before scoring. In other words, a striker commits an involuntary handball but later travels a certain distance or dribbles past several defenders before scoring a goal. In those cases, it will not be considered an immediate hand to goal and it will not be penalized.