Football’s most innocuous incidents are now upstaging the moments that really matter

VAR and an ever more complicated rulebook meant Callum Hudson-Odoi’s handball took the spotlight in the match between Chelsea and Manchester United at the weekend, writes Lawrence Ostlere

Chelsea’s Callum Hudson-Odoi, right, under pressure from Man United’s Mason Greenwood, brushes his hand against the ball (Getty)

Football statisticians generally agree that penalties have a conversion rate of around 76-80 per cent. Presumably that figure bumps up a little when, say, Harry Kane or Bruno Fernandes is standing over the ball, and based on this weekend’s evidence it goes down when any Brighton player steps up. It is, though, always a decisive advantage in a football match and a rare and precious thing at the highest level: a free shot at goal.

This basic premise got lost in the only talking point of the weekend’s big showdown between Chelsea and Manchester United, which turned into a predictably underwhelming 0-0 draw. David de Gea made a game-turning save, but that faded into irrelevance in the post-game narrative.

United supporters were enraged on social media by replays which showed Chelsea’s Callum Hudson-Odoi jabbing the ball with the back of his hand. Pundits spent much of the day dissecting the incident, and a photo which later emerged showing the wing-back wearing the ball like a wedding ring did little to appease furious fans.

Lost in the furnace of red-hot takes was the original purpose of the game’s laws. Handball is the first rule of football, in place to prevent players using their hands or arms to gain an advantage; a penalty is punishment designed to deter defenders from fouling attackers in goal-threatening positions. Neither of these fundamental concepts of football could be honestly applied to such an imperceptible moment as Hudson-Odoi’s, which in real time nobody even noticed. But with the aid of some replays and an ever more complicated handball rule, it transcended the entire game. Surely no elite match should ever be decided by something so minor and peripheral to the actual aim of trying to score and prevent goals, and where the punishment so wildly outweighs the crime?

There are few other examples in the world of sport when something innocuous can be so influential to the outcome. Of course to some extent this has always been the case in football, a low-scoring game naturally decided on the smallest margins, but it feels noticeably more pernickety than ever before. This is partly about VAR and the many slow-motion cameras which spot crimes we never knew existed. But increasingly it is about something deeper, about the essence of the world’s most popular sport being eroded by a fattening rulebook. Whether or not it was handball misses the point: that such a furious debate exists at all indicates there is something fundamentally wrong with the beautiful game.

Yours,

Lawrence Ostlere

Assistant sports editor