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So to try to understand what the thought process was a bit more I went to IFAB, and technically the « chest to arm » scenario isn’t covered.

The closest we have is this :

a player heads/kicks the ball and it then hits their own hand/arm? This is not handball (unless the ball goes directly into the opponents’ goal or the player scores immediately afterwards, in which case a direct free kick is awarded to the other team).

This might seem like semantics but maybe the fact it’s not covered is why he went with it ?

Either way it shouldn’t be a thing, a player simply cannot control or predict where the ball is going in this situation. It’s just too unfair to give a penalty for that.