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One of the basic premises I take when evaluating the laws of the game is that if a player benefits by breaking the rule, then there is something wrong with the laws and punishments.
I’m not going to get all moralistic over Luis Suárez’s handball. He probably did what virtually every professional football player would have done which was to give his sides an outside chance to stay in the game rather than lose. However, this action surely reveals a loophole within the handball law where a player can still benefit from doing a deliberate handball even when the player was caught.
So I proposed that football should introduce a penalty goal similar to penalty tries in rugby or goal-tending in basketball where the team is awarded a goal. If the player handballs the ball that was in the opinion of the referee that denied a clear goal then a penalty goal should be given. If the handball was deliberate then the player should be given a yellow card.
Now people may ask why handball should be given special treatment in terms of penalty goal. The difference between a handball and a foul from a ill-timed tackle inside a box is that with a foul that prevented the player from having a shot on goal, there’s no guarantee that if the foul didn’t take place a goal would have been scored. There’s always a possibility that the player could have missed the shot or the goalkeeper would have saved the shot. Therefore a penalty is a sufficient punishment for these types of fouls as it still requires the attacking side to be good enough to beat the keeper.
However, with a handball that stops the ball from entering the net, there is no doubt that if the foul didn’t take place a goal would have been scored. Therefore a penalty goal would be sufficient punishment.
Therefore there should be two tiers of punishment for handball inside the box. If there is a deliberate handball that didn’t stop the ball from getting into the net like the handball from Nemanja Vidić, then a penalty and a yellow card would be sufficient punishment. However, if a handball prevented a goal like the Luis Suárez or the Harry Kewell’s handball, then a penalty goal would be given. Although Luis Suárez would be given a yellow card for deliberate handball and Harry Kewell would be let off without a card.
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