"His hand's in a natural position!"

Narration and conviction are a great combination to help you sell your calls.

Working hard to be in the right position for these moments can make the difference between seeing this clearly or missing it entirely.

Here’s MLS Inside Video Review #8. Watch and learn!

I’m actually not going to go through my full analysis this time around.

Instead I want to focus on one handball incident and what the referee did while delaying for VAR to review…

At 3:41, right after the incident, you can hear the referee yelling: “HIS HAND’S IN A NATURAL POSITION!”

My takeaways:

• Narrating exactly what’s happening so players know exactly what you saw is extremely important! You can even raise your voice just to make sure everybody on the pitch and even the sidelines can hear you.

• This can also help sell your call. The more conviction you have in your decision, the more likely players are to believe you saw it right.

One more comment: I find it strange that players continue to surround referees while VAR is reviewing a call. It’s clearly not the referees decision anymore unless VAR calls them to the monitor. Maybe players are just so used to it from lower levels when VAR isn’t available? Either way, I think communicating this to the players could be a good way for a referee to remove approaching players. “It’s with VAR now!” “Nothing you say to me now is helpful!” “If it deserves a second look, they’ll call me to the monitor!”

Know a soccer ref? Feel free to share this with them 💙