The perfect shot of Jordan Morris’ goal
It seems to show the ball touching his hand, but maybe not enough to have overruled the call on the field anyway.
LevyFilms captured some impressive footage from Sunday’s game. As usual, it’s pretty and interesting and should be viewed in full. But they had at least one shot that gives a particularly important angle of a play that was contentious in real time and might even be more so now. I’m talking about Jordan Morris’ 2nd minute goal.
The footage that Levy captures seems to show pretty definitively that the ball at least touched Morris’ hand. If you slow down the footage enough, you can see his wrist bending ever so slightly when the ball strikes it.
This angle, presumably, was not available to referees when it was officially reviewed. I’m not entirely convinced it would have mattered, though. Although referee guidelines suggest that a goal should never be allowed when the ball comes off a players hand — inadvertently or otherwise — I’m not sure this level of contact would have been enough to overturn the call on the field.
As clear as contact with Morris’ hand may be, it’s equally clear that the ball is directed off his knee. Does his hand slow down the ball enough for his knee to make that contact? Watching it in super slow motion that’s hard to say. What I don’t think happened here was a “clear and obvious” mistake on the part of the referees.