Seal Dribble - Soccer Question

I read about this as well. Within the rules but some seem to consider it bad form (similar to "unwritten" rules in other sports). While I follow the sport I don't think I'm one to offer any great insight one way or another. It's different and takes skill but my gut tells me it isn't really in the spirit of the game. That being said I don't have a major problem with it.

I have to agree. At least as a keeper I have the option of punching the ball away. If I miss the ball I doubt he will do it again against us.

I played defense as a soccer player on up to the college club level and was trained to play it very physically, to use my body to intimidate the front guys on the other team. 

Unless the game has changed a lot, I don't see a problem with creaming the seal.  You can't just let him waltz into the zone and get a shot off.

The guy in the video was making a point.  Strenuously. 

The spacing in soccer is very different than basketball.  If you can't touch the guy because he's bouncing a ball on his head and you stop in front of him he'll just go around you with, oh, 15 feet or so to spare.  Do you just trail along behind him and wait for him to miss/pass/score?

You can go for the ball with your head, I agree, but the rules of soccer clearly (and obviously) allow you to go for a ball with your feet.  If a defender launches at a guy doing this, doesn't show his studs, doesn't go through the guy and picks the ball cleanly from the forehead it should be a legal tackle, yes?  Well, it wouldn't be if I was center ref.  I'd call dangerous play.  So now we have refs having to choose between penalizing players for legal plays or let it go and deal with the dude's crushed skull later in the match.

Consider a guy playing a ball from the ground (the player's laying on the ground that is).  He can be whistled for dangerous play for sticking his unprotected noggin into a forest of boots just as easily as the other guy can foul by kicking near the first guys head.  I'd be strongly inclined to look at this the same way.

Best solution on this for me is warn the guy for either unsporting behavior or bringing the game into disrepute and book him on the second go round.  That'll solve it post haste.

There's no room for it in the game.  It fundamentally changes the way soccer is played. 

The refs have to call fouls.  A boot six inches above a guy's head is dangerous play.  There's really no other way to look at it. 

Obviously, if the boot connects with the head the offending player's going to be penalized with something more than a free kick and possibly just less than criminal charges. 

There's no good answer here.  It doesn't fit.  Nor does stuffing the ball under your jersey and sauntering down the field.  As far as I know there's no direct prohibition of this in the laws of the game but I guarantee you it's not allowed.

Ref is final authority.  If it's me, Kerlon is warned to stop it.  If he does it again I, at the very least, award a free kick the other way.

I shouldn't have said hammer, I should have said 'Lay A Shoulder Block On Him', which then becomes a judgement call on the refs part, does it not?

What you'd do in Hockey is send some 3d string defenseman out there to lay him out every time he does it. I'd guess he'd stop after the 3d or 4th concussion...

Well, color me confused, but isn't he controlling the ball by dribbling it with his head?

Or does 'Controlling The Ball'have to be on the ground?


That's what I said: Get the head butt guy out of retirement, he looks like he could take him down...