Euro 2024: Should Germany penalty v Denmark have been given?

ITV’s Euro 2024 commentators Ally McCoist and Clive Tyldesley made their outrage clear after Joachim Andersen was penalised for handball just moments after having what would have been a goal disallowed for offside at the other end.

‘Rip the whole thing up and start again’, was Tyldesley’s plea in his final game as an ITV commentator.

That version of the rule was never, in fact, applied with much consideration given to intent, because the vast majority of handballs have always been like the one in the Denmark game: a player’s arm outstretched innocently, but indisputably struck in a manner that disrupted the flight of the ball. Cases like Diego Maradona against England, Thierry Henry against Ireland or Luis Suarez against Ghana have always been the exception.

There are times when quite simply, the wrong decision has been reached, sometimes with massive consequences – but most exist in that grey area. Could Andersen have got out of the way of that ball at that distance? No. Could he have had his arm in a different position? Yes. Did he put his arm there in an attempt to block the ball? No. Was his body shape made bigger by it being there when it didn’t need to be? Yes.

For me, that would have been a handball under any version of the rules except for the imaginary ‘only if it’s entirely, undoubtedly intentional’ version that people pretend once used to be the case. The talk of it being made by snickometer was transparently nonsense: you could see with your own eyes that he made contact, and that he raised his hand towards the path of the ball. However, my WhatsApp inbox contains plenty of people who profoundly disagree with me, and that’s honestly fine: I genuinely see their perspective.

So, in much the same way that an intentional foul to stop a clear goalscoring opportunity is a red card and a penalty, but an earnest but mistimed tackle is only a yellow and a penalty…could we not make it so that a penalty is only awarded for handling inside the box where the handball is judge either to 1) be intentional or 2) stop the ball from going in the net? Otherwise, give an indirect free kick, like for a backpass.