Everton not awarded handball penalty due to lack of evidence ball hit ‘red-zone’
By Jacob Whitehead and Greg O'Keeffe
The video assistant referee (VAR) did not award Everton a penalty against Manchester City in their Premier League match on Sunday because of a lack of conclusive evidence that the ball hit Rodri’s arm in the ‘red zone’, The Athletic understands.
Referee Paul Tierney did not award a penalty, but VAR Chris Kavanagh recommended that the game be halted to check the incident.
But Kavanagh decided that there was not enough conclusive evidence that the ball contacted Rodri in the ‘red zone’, the area of the arm beneath the shirt-line which constitutes a handball.
He did not recommend that Tierney check the incident on the monitor, and the game continued.
Handball is defined by the FA as when: “the upper boundary of the arm is in line with the bottom of the armpit. Not every touch of a player’s hand/arm with the ball is an offence.
“It is an offence if a player deliberately touches the ball with their hand/arm (or when) touching the ball with their hand/arm when it has made their body unnaturally bigger.”