{"id":388592,"date":"2026-01-24T20:52:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T20:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/388592\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T20:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T20:52:08","slug":"farai-hallam-makes-brave-call-to-deny-man-city-penalty-against-wolves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/388592\/","title":{"rendered":"Farai Hallam makes ‘brave’ call to deny Man City penalty against Wolves"},"content":{"rendered":"

Making your Premier League debut at Manchester City would be a daunting prospect for anyone – even as a referee.<\/p>\n

But 32-year-old Farai Hallam, once a professional footballer on Stevenage’s books, earned widespread praise for his performance during City’s 2-0 win over Wolves at Etihad Stadium<\/a> on Saturday.<\/p>\n

With the hosts leading 1-0 in the first half, goalscorer Omar Marmoush was convinced the hosts should be awarded a penalty after Wanderers defender Yerson Mosquera appeared to handle the ball inside the area.<\/p>\n

Hallam was unmoved, waving appeals away, only to then be sent to the pitchside monitor by the video assistant referee (VAR) to check the incident.<\/p>\n

We all know what that normally means. The City fans were already celebrating.<\/p>\n

After watching several replays, however, Hallam surprised nearly everyone inside the stadium by choosing to stick with his original decision.<\/p>\n

“After review, the ball hits the arm of the Wolves player, which is in a natural position so the on-field decision will remain,” he announced over the tannoy.<\/p>\n

Former Premier League assistant referee Darren Cann said it was “without doubt the correct decision”.<\/p>\n

“Hallam, officiating in his first Premier League match, made an excellent and courageous call to stick with his on-field decision of no handball,” Cann told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n

“This was without doubt the correct decision as Yerson Mosquera’s arm was in a justifiable position and the ball was played on to his arm from very close range.<\/p>\n

“A brave and correct decision in law from a highly regarded referee making his Premier League debut.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Making your Premier League debut at Manchester City would be a daunting prospect for anyone – even as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-388592","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}