Soccer Fouls - Soccer Rules

You would think the rules regarding soccer fouls are straightforward and easy to grasp, however there are several nuances that makes it one of the most interpretable rules of the game.

In other sports, a foul would be characterized as "it's a foul if you hit the other guy" and although that's partially true for soccer fouls too, sometimes you don't even have to hit someone on the pitch for the ref to call a foul, whereas sometimes you can freely hit opposing players without triggering a call (I see you grinning already!).

Yellow Card

Confused yet? I'll explain in a bit. But first let's take a quick view on the main rules surrounding a soccer foul.

In FIFA's "Constitution", Laws of the Game, a foul is the act of kicking, tripping, jumping in/at, charging, striking or pushing an opponent.

Fouls in soccer are penalized by handing over the ball to the team that suffered the foul if the foul has been committed outside a penalty area. In this case, a direct or indirect free kick is given, depending on the nature of the soccer foul, with the kick being taken from the spot where the foul occurred.

In case the offence occurs in the defending team's penalty area, the ref will give the attacking team a penalty kick, which is a great scoring opportunity, allowing a player to take a shot from 12 yards (11 meters) with just the opposing goalkeeper to beat and no defenders around him. The player that caused the foul is also in danger of being cautioned with a yellow card, or being sent off from the pitch with a red card, if the offence was way over the limits.

Examples of red card fouls include extremely hard tackles that injure or are aimed at injuring an opposing player, intentionally hitting or stepping on a fallen opponent. However, a player is also shown a red card if he collects two cautionary yellows.

The above mentioned fouls are all direct contact and thus are all penalized with at least a direct free kick. Like I said earlier however, there are at least three soccer foul types that don't necessarily require direct contact to be penalized.

One would be preventing the goalkeeper from releasing the ball from his hand. Even if you don't touch the keeper, simply standing in front of him, not allowing him to throw or kick the ball forward is considered a foul and penalized with an indirect free kick (not that anyone would attempt a shot on goal from their own keeper's grounds, but rules are rules…).

Another similar type of soccer foul, also known as obstruction, occurs when the defender cuts the running direction of the opposing player, regardless if he has the ball or not (although the "victim" of this type of soccer foul is the player controlling the ball, 9 out of 10 times).

Last but not least, dangerous play occurs when a player has a potentially dangerous kick close to an opposing player.