Game 14, 2018-19
There's one football Law that I dislike in particular. A given team is taking a goal kick, and the goalkeeper, say, plays it short to a defender on the edge of the area. There is no attacking player anywhere near the defender - that is, the opposing team are not part of the current craze for pressing, or counter-pressing, or whatever the 1001 Apostles of Klopp are calling it this week.
The defender receives the ball just inside the penalty area, or on the line of the penalty area. The law says that you have to blow the whistle and make them take it again. The same if it's a free-kick taken from within the penalty area. So you're faced with the following choices:
1. You blow and insist on the re-take. Everyone sighs, some might utter an epithet. Bloody hell, ref, does it matter? Such a trivial stoppage for, really, nothing. The Germans have a great word for it - kleinlich, which covers petty, fussy, pedantic and nit-picking all in one. Sometimes Bundesliga refs will be marked down in kicker magazine for being kleinlich, and to me there's no greater criticism. I think I'd rather be called useless, inept, blind and corrupt.
