The well-known journalist Mykola Nesenyuk shared his thoughts on the new interpretations of the rules of football.
"Even before the final tournament of Euro 2024 was over, it went down in football history with a new interpretation of football rules. And not only those that determine the outcome of the game. Football statistics have also changed - in the current tournament, according to the protocols, a lot of so-called "auto-goals" have been scored, i.e. goals that were scored by their own players, not by players of the opposing teams.
Without knowing the latest trends in the interpretation of football by international football institutions, one might think that the participants in the European Championship had collectively gone crazy and started hitting their own goals instead of others'. Or they were forced to do so by their opponents, who had no choice but to hit their own goal.
In fact, nothing has changed in the football game. What has changed is its interpretation. The old rules have been interpreted in a new way, and now, for example, it is almost impossible to distinguish between a handball and an accidental hit to the hand. And this gives a certain amount of room for imagination on the part of numerous referees armed with the latest generation of electronics. But let's get back to the "auto-goals". For almost a century and a half, since the results of football matches began to be recorded in the protocols, an own goal was considered to be a goal only if the defender played poorly and hit his own goal. That's why there were almost no such "auto-goals" - they happened only a few times a year.
What has changed now? What has changed is that at Euro 2024, all balls that hit the goal after a ricochet from the defending team are considered "auto-goals". The "author" of such an "auto-goal" sometimes does not even see the ball, which treacherously hits him and then flies into his own goal. This is how the scorers are now recorded in the post-match protocols. In my opinion, this is not only unfair - the one who actually hit the goal is being deprived of a well-deserved "labor" goal.
It's also unethical - the player who kicked the ball into his own goal now looks like a kind of anti-hero who has caused his own team to lose. And this, given the extreme tension in the fight for every ball, has a painful effect on the players' psyche. As if it weren't enough that they are forced to play near their goal with their hands behind their backs, which prevents them from playing their best.
I don't know when exactly this instruction to record the authors of goals scored was given, but it obviously affects the statistics - strikers began to score less. To be more precise, they score the same amount, but some of their goals are "stolen" from them, recorded as goals scored in their own goal. If this is the case, then we should rewrite all soccer statistics for a good hundred years, during which the ball was recorded to the person who struck the goal, not to the person who was hit by the ball in flight.
Goals were scored by attacking players even after two ricochets, and sometimes more. I remember how in March 1986, Oleg Blokhin scored a goal against Rapid Vienna in the quarterfinals of the Cup Cup. Then, after a shot by a Dynamo striker, the ball first hit one defender, then hit another, then hit the goalkeeper's head and flew into the goal! So after the shot there was not one, but three ricochets at once! But the goal was credited to Blokhin. Probably they could not determine which of the three Rapid players to record it as an "auto-goal"...
It's good that the new way of keeping statistics on goals scored doesn't affect the result - who cares who gets the winning goal? But it still looks somehow unfair - instead of the hero striker who scored the goal, we are shown a poor defender whose name will forever be written in the minutes of the lost match so that everyone remembers who is to blame for the failure! I wonder if they will start producing "auto-goals" in our championship after watching Euro 2024 matches? I think so. And I'm not happy about it," Nesenyuk wrote on his Facebook page.