No DOGSO & phantom penalty claim (MLS Matchday 10 Instant Replay)

A video study session that covers basic knowledge around DOGSO and determining if a defender jumps "into" an attacker.

This looks like the defender is jumping hard into the attacker but you have to watch the video to see it in context!

I’ve done really long posts analyzing every decision in these videos before.

Moving forward, I’ll just select a few talking points that I found interesting, disagreed with, require complex thinking, etc.

Here we go!

1. No foul, play on (5:12)

The referee on the field made this call and the voiceover disagreed with him saying it should have been a foul and penalty.

His argument was that the defender jumps into the attacker and doesn’t play the ball.

The defender does leave his feet, but I’m not sure I see it as, “jumping into the attacker”

But I don’t see it that way. While the voiceover is right in what he says, there’s just not enough contact or obstruction to justify a penalty call here, in my opinion.

Also as you can see from the screenshot above, is it obvious the contact happens inside the penalty box? Looks like the attacker’s toes might be just brushing the line but I don’t think it’s clearly and obviously in the box for a penalty claim.

There’s also quite a lot of embellishment by the attacker when I see this. When the first thing I think of when an attacker goes down is “embellishment,” it’s highly likely there was some.

2. No DOGSO, DFK, yellow card (5:41)

This is an interesting one!

First, let’s remember what we have to consider for DOGSO:

• distance between the offense and the goal ✅

• general direction of the play ✅

• likelihood of keeping or gaining control of the ball ❌

• location and number of defenders ✅

The ‘foul’ happens close to the close, while going towards goal and clearly is executed by the last defender.

But the attacker also clearly has no control and seems very unlikely to gain control of the ball!

I think given the referee called the foul, a determination that it was not DOGSO and to opt for a DFK and yellow card is the right decision.

To be honest, I don’t see where the foul happens. I see an arm on the attacker but it doesn’t look like that arm affects the attacker. He falls down a whole second later and I can’t tell what contact definitively caused the fall.

Putting a hand here is perfectly legal as long as it doesn’t affect the opposing player!

I’m not sure I even would have given a foul here. Maybe I’m totally wrong here but I don’t see enough here to call anything. Could have easily been a phantom foul if I was in the middle.

To counter my own thoughts here, the defender doesn’t argue the foul call at all so maybe it was the right call. I just don’t see it.

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