Fouls and misconduct (association football)


In the sport of association football, fouls and misconduct are acts committed by players which are deemed by the referee to be unfair and are subsequently penalised. An offence may be a foul, misconduct or both depending on the nature of the offence and the circumstances in which it occurs. Fouls and misconduct are addressed in Law 12 of the Laws of the Game.
A foul is an unfair act by a player, deemed by the referee to contravene the game's laws, that interferes with the active play of the match. Fouls are punished by the award of a free kick to the opposing team. A list of specific offences that can be fouls are detailed in Law 12 of the Laws of the Game ; these mostly concern unnecessarily aggressive physical play and the offence of handling the ball. An offence is classified as a foul when it meets all the following conditions:
  1. It is committed by a player ;
  2. It occurs while the ball is in play;
  3. It is committed against an opponent.
For example, a player striking the referee or a teammate is not a foul, but may be considered misconduct.
Misconduct is any conduct by a player that is deemed by the referee to warrant a disciplinary sanction. Misconduct may include acts which are, additionally, fouls. Unlike fouls, misconduct may occur at any time, including when the ball is out of play, during half-time and before and after the game, and players, team officials and substitutes may be sanctioned for misconduct.
Misconduct will result in the offender either receiving a caution or being dismissed from the field. A dismissed player cannot be replaced; their team is required to play the remainder of the game with one fewer player. A second caution results in the player being sent off. The referee has considerable discretion in applying the Laws; in particular, the offence of unsporting behaviour may be used to deal with most events that violate the spirit of the game, even if they are not listed as specific offences.
The system of cautioning and dismissal has existed in the Laws since 1881. Association football was the first sport to introduce penalty cards to indicate the referee's decisions; a practice since adopted by many other sports. The first major use of the cards was in the 1970 FIFA World Cup, but they were not made mandatory at all levels until 1992.

Categories of fouls

The laws divide fouls into two categories depending on the type of free kick awarded to the opposition, either a direct or indirect free kick.

Direct free kick offences

Direct free kicks offences are the more common type of foul. If a direct free kick is awarded in the penalty area of the offending player's team, a penalty kick is awarded.
The majority of fouls concern contact between opponents. Although contact between players is a part of the game, the Laws prohibit most forceful contact, meaning that, unlike other football codes, a tackle in association football is required to be predominantly directed against the ball rather than the player in possession of it. Specifically the laws prohibit charging, jumping at, kicking, pushing, striking, tripping, tackling or challenging an opponent in a manner considered to be careless, reckless or "using excessive force". Being careless makes it an offence, being reckless makes it a cautionable offence and using excessive force makes it a sending-off offence. Such classification of contact is a matter of judgement for the referee.
The handball offence is also penalised with a direct free kick. Players in association football are prohibited from touching the ball below the armpit while the ball is in play, with the exception of the goalkeeper in their penalty area. When determining a handball offence, not every touch of the player's hand/arm to the ball is an offence. The area of the arm in line with the bottom of the armpit and above is allowed to touch the ball. Unavoidable accidental contact is not penalised - such as if the ball is struck against a player's arm at short range and the player could not have reasonably avoided the contact. However, if the player has positioned their arm so as to make their body "unnaturally bigger" and contact occurs, this is considered handball. Additionally, if a player scores in the opponent's goal with their hand or arm, even if accidental and unavoidable, this is considered handball and the goal does not stand. The goalkeeper also has the same rules regarding handballs outside of the penalty area. If the goalkeeper handles the ball inside the penalty area when not allowed to do so, an indirect free kick is awarded. 
Direct free kicks are also awarded for holding an opponent, impeding them with contact, biting or spitting at other persons, throwing an object at an opponent or match official, or making contact with the ball with a held object.

Indirect free kick offences

An indirect free kick is awarded if a player:
  • plays in a dangerous manner
  • impedes the progress of an opponent without any contact being made
  • is guilty of dissent, using offensive, insulting or abusive language and/or action or other verbal offences
  • prevents the goalkeeper from releasing the ball from their hands or kicks or attempts to kick the ball when the goalkeeper is in the process of releasing it
  • initiates a deliberate trick for the ball to be passed to the goalkeeper with the head, chest, knee etc. to circumvent the back-pass rule, whether or not the goalkeeper touches the ball with their hands
  • commits any other offence, not previously mentioned in the Laws, for which play is stopped to caution or send off a player
An indirect free kick is awarded if a goalkeeper, inside their penalty area, commits any of the following offences:
  • controls the ball with their hands for more than six seconds before releasing it from possession
  • touches the ball again with their hands after releasing it from possession and before it has touched another player
  • touches the ball with their hands after it has been deliberately kicked to them by a team-mate, or thrown to them from a throw-in taken by a team-mate
An indirect free kick is also awarded if an offside offence occurs, though offside is not considered a foul and will never be punished by a caution or dismissal.
Indirect free kicks are taken from the place where the offence occurred, even if it was inside the offending player's penalty area. If the offence took place inside their goal area the indirect free kick is taken from the nearest point on the goal area line which runs parallel to the goal line.

Other offences

Not all infractions of the Laws are fouls. Non-foul infractions may be dealt with as technical infractions or misconduct. Persistent offences of the Laws is an offence for which the player may be cautioned.

Misconduct

The referee may consider serious or persistent offences to be misconduct worthy of an official caution or dismissal from the game. Association football was the first sport to use coloured cards to indicate these actions.

Yellow card (caution)

A yellow card is shown by the referee to indicate that a player has been officially cautioned. The player's details are then recorded by the referee in a small notebook; hence a caution is also known as a "booking". A player who has been cautioned may continue playing in the game; however, a player who receives a second caution in a match is sent off. Law 12 of the Laws of the Game lists the types of offences and misconduct that may result in a caution. Players can be cautioned and shown a yellow card if they commit the following offences:
  • Delaying the restart of play
  • Dissent by word or action
  • Entering, re-entering or deliberately leaving the field of play without the referee's permission
  • Failing to respect the required distance when play is restarted with a dropped ball, corner kick, free kick, or throw-in
  • Persistent offences
  • Unsporting behaviour
There are also two offences which apply in matches using the video assistant referee system:
  • Entering the referee review area
  • Excessively using the "review" hand gesture
What constitutes cautionable unsporting behaviour is generally at the referee's discretion, though Law 12 lists a number of examples. These include simulation, i.e., attempts to deceive the referee, or attempting to score by handling the ball. Fouls which are committed recklessly or fouls which are committed with the intention of stopping a promising attack are also considered unsporting behaviour and punishable with a yellow card. Fouls which are committed with excessive force, however, or most fouls which are deliberately committed to deny a goal or an obvious goalscoring opportunity are punishable by a red card.
The Laws state that goals may be celebrated, but that such celebrations should not be "excessive". Removing one's shirt or covering one's face with the shirt will result in a caution. Players may also be cautioned for climbing onto a perimeter fence or approaching/entering spectator areas in a manner that causes safety and/or security concerns.
In most tournaments, accumulating a certain number of yellow cards over several matches results in suspending the offending player for a certain number of subsequent matches, the exact number of cards and matches varying by jurisdiction. In the UEFA Champions League, for instance, accumulating two yellow cards in a tournament stage will lead to a one-game suspension. In such situations players have often been suspected of deliberately incurring a second booking in a tournament when the following game is of little importance, thus resetting their yellow card tally to zero for subsequent games. However, while technically within the rules of competition, this is considered unsportsmanlike. UEFA has occasionally acted on such choices and has given additional fines and/or suspensions to the players and managers involved. For example, Sergio Ramos both in 2010 and 2019 picked up extra Champions League suspensions after publicly suggesting during interviews that a yellow card that he accrued was on purpose for card cleaning, the first of which came together with Xabi Alonso under José Mourinho's orders.
In 2017 IFAB approved temporary dismissals for cautionable offences similar to that seen in other sports; however, this is only permitted for youth, veterans, disability and grassroots football. Competitions' use of this system—rather than normal yellow cards—is optional, and there are variations in how it can be implemented. For 90-minute games, the length of the temporary dismissal is 10 minutes.