So to try to understand what the thought process was a bit more I went to IFAB, and technically the « chest to arm » scenario isn’t covered.
The closest we have is this :
a player heads/kicks the ball and it then hits their own hand/arm?
This is not handball (unless the ball goes directly into the opponents’ goal or the player scores immediately afterwards, in which case a direct free kick is awarded to the other team).
This might seem like semantics but maybe the fact it’s not covered is why he went with it ?
Either way it shouldn’t be a thing, a player simply cannot control or predict where the ball is going in this situation. It’s just too unfair to give a penalty for that.
So to try to understand what the thought process was a bit more I went to IFAB, and technically the « chest to arm » scenario isn’t covered.
The closest we have is this :
This might seem like semantics but maybe the fact it’s not covered is why he went with it ?
Either way it shouldn’t be a thing, a player simply cannot control or predict where the ball is going in this situation. It’s just too unfair to give a penalty for that.