Soccer Rules-Fouls- Kicking


by Jeffrey Caminsky - Date: 2007-04-25 - Word Count: 440 Share This!

Under the rules of soccer there are ten offenses for which the punishment is a direct free. This means that the fouled team can score directly from the kick that serves as punishment for the foul. If committed by a defender inside his own penalty area, this direct free kick becomes a penalty kick. These fouls all punish acts on the field that the sport considers to be unfair or unsafe.

Most acts are fouls only if committed carelessly, recklessly, or with excessive force. Most acts on a soccer field are fouls only by degree. This is because most actions during the run of play are harmless in themselves, and become fouls only if done in an unfair manner. Players can bump into each other while running, or push past each while each is trying to avoid a collision. They may tussle over the ball, or leap to head a long pass and collide another player who is trying to do the same thing. They may kick at the ball and narrowly miss kicking their opponent's shin. All of these actions are just part of soccer, where most bodily contact is quite incidental to the players' attempts to win the ball and passes quite uneventfully during the course of the game.

At other times, though, a player may mistime a kick, misjudge a jump, or overestimate the body's ability to follow whatever instructions are coming from the brain, and those actions will exceed the bounds of fair play. Nobody can distinguish between fair and foul contact from a cold narrative of course, but there are some aspects of each foul that referees use to determine the result in a particular case:

Kicking
Kicking the ball is something every player on a soccer field tries to do. Kicking an opponent, on the other hand, is a foul.

Sometimes, a player's foot will come in contact with an opponent through an otherwise fair play. Contact may be superficial, or a players's foot may strike an opponent as one or both are falling to the ground (which may be grounds for a different foul, but might not be "kicking"). On the other hand, kicks can be quite painful, often leading players to lose their tempers. Under the rules, a player who does not exercise due care to avoid kicking an opponent commits a foul. A referee who sees two players contesting for a ball on the ground will be paying careful attention to the likeliest point of contact, their feet. If the foot misses the ball and connects with the opponent-whether through a knock on the shins, or a stomp on the foot-it will be a foul.


Related Tags: sports, soccer, kicking, fouls, soccer fouls, soccer rules, referee

Jeffrey Caminsky, a veteran public prosecutor in Michigan, specializes in the appellate practice of criminal law and writes on a wide range of topics. Both his science fiction adventure novel The Star Dancers, the first volume in the Guardians of Peace (tm) science fiction adventure series, and The Referee's Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating, are published by New Alexandria Press, http://www.newalexandriapress.com.

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