Gaffes during the Olympique Piraeus game may not prompt Arsene Wenger to replace the underfire shot-stopper in David Ospina with Petr Cech, but has made The International Football Association Board . revise the fifth official rule.
The Colombian goalkeeper mishandled the header from Kostas Fortounis allowing the Greek side to lead for the second time at Emirates Stadium in the game that ended 3-2 in favour of the visiting side. However, what seemed to have caught the attention of UEFA’s referee chief Pierluigi Collina was the gesture of fifth official Danny Makkelie, who seemed to point to the centre circle while he should have opted for alerting the referee only through his microphone.
a According to the laws of the game he did too much but today he becomes the good one. He went a bit far, but for me positively. He was not punished but used as an example and we have to learn from the positive situations. The arm of the official points to the centre circle and it is clear for everybody that he made the decision.
a If he was simply shouting in the microphone nobody would have understood that he made the decision. The laws are against it and we managed to change something. We are very pleased the decision was understood by IFAB and from this week’s qualifiers assistants are allowed to make a signal when there are doubtful situations.a
The almost-redundant new rule that allows the fifth official to point to the centre circle came into force on Thursday evening, but most fans would rather want referees to review penalty decisions as goal-line technology had already addressed the very issue.
