Goalkeepers will no longer be able to “unfairly distract” opposition penalty-kick takers after the International Football Association Board (IFAB) introduced a new rule change that will take effect from July 1.
Key points:
- IFAB will ban goalkeepers from “unfairly distracting” penalty-kick takers from July 1, including throwing the ball away and touching the goal posts
- Socceroo Andrew Redmayne and World Cup winner Emi Martinez famously used psychological tactics to gain an advantage in key shoot-outs
- The law change has been criticised by Socceroos goalkeeper coach John Crawley
As part of the 2023/24 law changes report, Law 14: The Penalty Kick will be amended to add a clarifying sentence to the expected behaviours of the goalkeeper.
“The defending goalkeeper must remain on the goal line, facing the kicker, between the goalposts, without touching the goalposts, crossbar or goal net, until the ball is kicked,” the law says.
“The goalkeeper must not behave in a way that unfairly distracts the kicker, e.g. delay the taking of the kick or touch the goalposts, crossbar or goal net.”
The decision means that the tactics used by Socceroos goalkeeper Andrew Redmayne — affectionately nicknamed “The Grey Wiggle” — who shot to fame for his goal-line dancing in Australia’s penalty shoot-out win against Peru to qualify for the 2022 men’s World Cup will now be outlawed.
Emiliano Martinez, the Argentinian goalkeeper who won the Golden Glove award in at the World Cup, also used techniques that taunted opposition penalty takers, most notably in the final against France where he made verbal comments, slowed down the process between penalties, and threw the ball away.
With the odds already stacked so heavily in the penalty-taker’s favour, goalkeepers have had to get creative during shoot-outs in order to rebalance the ledger, often resorting to psychological warfare to gain an advantage.
According to Geir Jordet, a professor of sports psychology at the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences, the entire penalty process is about routine, so a goalkeeper’s best weapon is to try and disrupt that.
“In a penalty shoot-out, you want to make events as predictable and safe as possible for your teammates,” he told ABC after the Peru win last year.
“A lot of goalkeepers do things on the line to try and distract; to try to disturb.
“What Redmayne did was follow that principle that it needs to be unpredictable, it needs to be a little erratic, it needs to have some variation.
“Because if all you do on the line is go from left to right, from right to left, it doesn’t have any impact; it’s very easy for the taker to block out. So it needs to be different.”
Redmayne and Martinez join an illustrious list of goalkeepers whose antics proved successful in key matches, such as former Liverpool goalkeepers Jerzy Dudek and Bruce Grobbelaar.
However, IFAB’s law change does not clarify what “unfairly distract” means beyond a single example, which is already punishable by yellow cards.
Such vague language could result in the law being unevenly applied depending on the interpretation of the match officials on the day.
When asked about the changes, Martinez said: “I always said that after the Copa America, I don’t know if I would do it again. I already saved the penalties that I had to save.
“And now the same thing happened to me, I don’t know if I’m going to save a penalty in 20 years. Maybe not. But I had to tackle them in the Copa America and in the World Cup.
“I was able to stop them and help the team win, that’s enough for me. We will always have to adapt to modern rules and what FIFA wants, so there will be no problem. We will adapt.”
Others have been more critical of the change, such as Socceroos goalkeeping coach John Crawley, who has worked with Redmayne in various capacities over the past decade.
“What more can we do? Are we just going to stand there and let them score?” he told the Sydney Morning Herald.
“I just think, on the whole, the goalkeeping community, we don’t get a lot. And now this is a bit of a kick in the face. It’s farcical, to be fair, and a strange amendment they’ve come up with.
“We’re at a disadvantage to begin with at penalties. Any type of edge that the goalkeeper can get in a penalty shootout, you’re still at a disadvantage, but that edge makes it a little bit more even.
“I just think, if they take that away from us, we might as well have a penalty and not have a goalkeeper.”
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