The throw in fails to fall within the requirements of Law 15:
Specifically, the ball is not delivered from “behind” the head. “Behind” here means from a position behind your back, relative to a vertically oriented body. The fact that the player is lying down at the time does not re-orient the meaning of “behind”.
I shouldn’t have just copied and pasted the rules from The Librarian. Maybe it’s because he translated it from Dutch but there is nothing in FIFA Law 15 that states one’s body must be facing the field, only that the player “faces the field of play”. People throw balls in all the time just barely facing the field when they throw downfield nearly parallel to the touchline. The body facing the sky thing is a red herring.
I am not that surprised the referee (or assistant referee) called it foul. He saw it in real-time and it might have looked as though the feet left the ground. What I am surprised at is all the websites I read commentary on that treated the episode like the throw-in was so obviously a horrible, ridiculous thing that they didn’t even bother pointing out how it was illegal. I don’t get that.
I have watched this in slo-mo many times. The ball did come from behind his head but not by a whole lot, which is all you need.
ETA: DSYoung Esq– he is not lying down at the time of the throw. He is balanced on two feet with his body above the ground. Much like an extreme limbo dancer
I’m quite happy that not everyone has the same opinion on what “the way it was meant to be played” means.
Rule 5, Section 2, Subsection A.ii:
Malarkey of any kind is not permitted. If such behavior continues, see Subsection A.vii: Shenanigans, and Subsection C.ix: Poppycock.
He was well within his rights.
My opinion is that the reason for the foul call was that the player began and ended the throw-in sitting down, and barely got his rear off the grass at release. Throwing the ball in whilst sitting is never going to be allowed. Conversely, if his momentum had continued to carry him to an upright position, I would agree the throw would be legal, if strange.
If I had been his coach, the whistle would not have surprised me in the least, and I would have been annoyed with the player, and happy that the Ref also didn’t nail him with Unsporting Behavior or Bringing the Game into Disrepute.
If the last bit seems unrealistically harsh, attend a High School game and see what happens when a bored Keeper, whose team is crushing the other team, who are unable to get the ball past midfield, gets bored and decides it would be amusing to sit (or lay) down on the ground for a nice rest. Unless his (and yes, it always seems to be a he) coach gets on him really quickly, my forecast is for a 50% chance of a verbal warning, and 50% chance of straight yellow card.
You will find no specific rules about Keepers not sitting down in the Laws of the Game, but the Ref will still be well within his/her rights.
For flip throw-ins that do not involve sitting down, here are examples of the two styles I have personally seen–in no case has there been a problem with the Refs or coaches about either of these styles.
Here is the flip you start without the ball, and includes some good closeup slo-mo shots:
Here is the one where you start with the ball in your hands, and comes from a U20 World Cup game and leads to a goal:
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“At the time of the throw” NO player has the ball behind his head. :rolleyes:
The ball must be thrown with both hands from behind the head. He fails to do this. It is a foul throw.
Notice that there’s no appearance that the team which made the throw engages in any protest of the decision, either. 
Why shouldn’t it be allowed? There is nothing in the rules that forbids sitting down for a throw in (as long as feet are on the ground) And, unlike a goalkeeper insulting the other team by lying down, I fail to see how this is unsportsmanlike-- certainly no more unsportsmanlike than a flip throw.
I assumed as I watched him prepare that he would get up on his feet as part of the motion of throwing it. I think that even if he were meeting the letter of the law as written, it’s perfectly reasonable for a referee to say he’s not following the spirit of the rules by only meeting the requirements at the instant that he theoretically needs to, if only because it’s impossible for someone without slow-motion instant replay to determine whether it was actually legal according to the letter of the law. The ref called it back more because he couldn’t determine the legality of it, and couldn’t be expected to given what it involved doing.
You’re actually more right than you know.
Ref can call anything not covered that ‘brings the game into disrepute’
Running with the ball tucked under your shirt…hanging from the crossbar to clear the ball off the line (say keeper is beat and a short player cant reach it with his head)…scoring a goal, signing the ball with a sharpie tucked in your sock and handing it to the keeper…scoring a goal and using the corner flag to machine gun opponent fans…
I’ll file that under “Man things sure have changed since i played” I played when men were men and shinguards wern’t required…a handball off the line wasn’t even a card nevermind an automatic ejection…and simulation was something you confronted the ref about not the player. The player you give a wink and a nod for being a cheeky monkey.
So IOW…i sat all the time when things got particularly boring. if it were indoors, I’d run up field and try and score if we were dominating that badly.
They used to get mad about Voga Wallace’s flip throw-in, but it was ruled legal. Sadly, he died in 2000 of a heart attack. 
I attended UVA for a couple of years and got to see him play; it was amazing (and not just for the throw-in).
On an unrelated note, when my dad was stationed in England, we lived not too far from Brackley. I even went to school there for a short time.
But come on whose going to call a penalty on a little girl for the throw like that?
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He could also be whistled for delay of game.
If I was the ref I’d blow my whistle the moment he got on his back, ran over and asked “Are you sure you want to do this?”
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