Soccer Fouls

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.

History actually recorded some famous soccer fouls that sparked controversy all around the world. The first professional foul (a foul where the defender intentionally fouls an attacker that has a good chance) was "patented" by Willie Young of Arsenal, who committed a deliberate foul on Paul Allen of West Ham, in the 1980 FA Cup Final the two teams played.

The incident sparked some intense controversy both on and off pitch, as the gesture countered all fair-play rules that the game was played around. Since then however, the professional foul became a common and an accepted method of stopping a team from having a good opportunity on goal.

Another negatively famous foul was the one made by Olympique Lyonnais' Serge Blanc on then Celtic's striker Henrik Larsson. TV Cameras caught the exact moment of the foul and showed how Blanc's leg catches Larsson's leg on the ground and breaks it. The images horrified many viewers as they seemed like taken from a war movie.

It seemed that Larsson's leg was dangling down from the spot it broke, but eventually doctors claimed that it was an illusion caused by his shinpad going down the side of his leg and that the fracture isn't as bad as it looked on cameras. Still, Larsson had to recover for 1.5 years before returning to the big stage of European soccer.

Last on the list of famous soccer fouls just came in on the last World Cup from Germany. In the final played by France against Italy, France's captain, Zinedine Zidane was going to play his last official soccer game ever, as he announced his retirement from both his club and the national team after the final.

Being considered the best player of the tournament so far and knowing that this would be the magnificent France captain's last match, the camera was pointed at him almost as much as it was pointed to the game itself.

Unfortunately for Zidane, this meant that his 114th minute headbutt of Italy's Marco Matterazzi was clearly caught on tape, sparking worldwide feelings of anger, disappointment, frustration but also empathy from Zizou's fans.

In conclusion, since I kept going on about fouls and when they occur, let me also tell you when you can get away with it. It's not considered a soccer foul if the defending player attacks and hits the ball, even if he hits the opposing player in the slide (there's a lot of interpretation from the referee here though). This is often the cause of controversy regarding soccer fouls, as in the fast pace of the game a referee will have a hard time deciding whether the defending player hit the ball or the opponent's legs first.