{"id":397398,"date":"2026-01-07T11:44:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T11:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/397398\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T11:44:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T11:44:07","slug":"west-hams-tomas-soucek-criticises-joke-penalty-decision-against-nottingham-forest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/397398\/","title":{"rendered":"West Ham’s Tomas Soucek criticises ‘joke’ penalty decision against Nottingham Forest"},"content":{"rendered":"

West Ham<\/a> midfielder Tomas Soucek said the Premier League has become “like basketball” after his side lost a crucial game against Nottingham Forest<\/a> following what he described as a “joke” decision to award their opponents a late penalty.<\/p>\n

The video assistant referee (VAR) intervened after Hammers goalkeeper Alphonse Areola collided with Morgan Gibbs-White while attempting to get to a cross.<\/p>\n

Soucek, who headed the free-kick clear before it could reach Areola or Gibbs-White, drew comparisons to basketball – a sport in which minimal contact is permitted.<\/p>\n

Gibbs-White’s resulting 89th-minute spot-kick condemned West Ham<\/a> to a 2-1 defeat which left Nuno Espirito Santo’s side seven points adrift of safety.<\/p>\n

“For me it is a joke. I just saw it again and I think we can have 20 penalties per game if it is like that,” Soucek told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n

“I came to the Premier League because I thought it was the toughest league in the world, and we are all fighters and warriors.<\/p>\n

“But this looks more like basketball when you can’t touch the player. <\/p>\n

“[Areola] is the same in the dressing room. He didn’t know who was fouled. He came for the ball, I think I cleared it and it was already out. We didn’t know why there was VAR and then the penalty, so it was tough for all of us.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"West Ham midfielder Tomas Soucek said the Premier League has become “like basketball” after his side lost a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-397398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}