More than two months after Euro 2024, the UEFA Referees Committee has told their international referees attending the Summer Course that the Cucurella handball in the quarter-final Germany-Spain should have resulted in a penalty kick. This instruction has been included in the latest review by the referees’ body, which periodically analyses European matches - whether at national team or club level – to uniformize the criteria and ensure that referees make the same decisions on similar plays. In the document, to which Relevo has had access, UEFA is blunt in its explanations: there was an error both for referee Anthony Taylor, who did not award the penalty kick after the Spanish player's handball, and for the VAR, for not intervening and suggesting a video review to the referee.
“Following the latest UEFA guidelines, a handball contact that stops a shot on goal should be penalized more strictly, and in most cases a penalty kick should be awarded, unless the defender's arm is very close to the body or across the body”, the comment said. “In this case, the defender stops the shot on goal with his arm, which is not very close to the body, making it bigger, so a penalty kick should have been awarded”, UEFA added. However, the European refereeing authorities do not consider that Marc Cucurella should have been given a yellow card: “No disciplinary action is required”, they concluded. The same criteria should have been included in the match report that the appointed UEFA observer, in this case the chairman of the Referees Committee, Roberto Rosetti, prepared after the game and which the referees involved in the match received, as usual, along with their marks for the match. That match between the recent European champions and the tournament hosts in Stuttgart resulted in key match incidents for both referee and the VAR, reflected in their marks.
Source: Relevo