Football (Soccer) Rules... With A Twist

As you may have probably known, soccer has a long history dated back to the medieval times, or even as far as the ancient civilizations. However, do you know there was no formal rules until 1863?

So what happened? On a nice cooling day (ok we made up the weather part as there’s no way of knowing) in the autumn of 1863 – 26th October to be precise, a bunch of amateur and semi-pro soccer clubs decided to meet up in London and formed the Football Association (the English version). They then came up with what’s called the “Laws of Football” (not American Football, obviously), which was a set of basic rules on how soccer should be governed. How basic were the basic rules? There were 13 of them and they have less words than this article.

The soccer rules have been constantly evolving since then, and covers more and more details as time passes. However, back in 1863 when the first set of “laws” was written, it was mainly to set some grounds to reduce the fistfights that often occur during the games then.

As we were saying, the soccer rules have been evolving since 1863, and one example is the “offside” rules, which was introduced 3 years later as they look more towards the tactical side of things.

Everyone wanted to be the striker before there was an offside rule. It was the best position on the field, as you camp up front and wait for the ball to come, you get the credit when you score, and you don’t get blamed when your team concedes a goal.

OK, enough of history, here’s some of the official modern day soccer rules with a short write-up of each:

1. Soccer field dimensions
   First of all, this is an awkward topic to discuss. No, really, it is. FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association - governing body of soccer (association football), futsal and beach football) understands that not every place on Earth has the luxury of land for full-sized soccer field.
   As such, a football field can have the following measurements:
   • Length: 100 – 130 yards (90 – 120 meters)
   • Width: 50 – 100 yards (45 – 90 meters)
   Here comes the awkward part – you can have a 100-yard-long by 100-yard-wide (yes, a square one!). We are not sure why FIFA doesn’t use a ratio.

2. Players
   Each team may have up to 11 players on the field, one of which is the goalkeeper. Minimum number of players for either team is 7. A match cannot be played if either team has less than 7 players (it would be too tiring for the players anyway!)
   For official leagues and tournaments, a maximum of 3 substitution can be made by each team during the game. However, the number of players on the bench (nominated substitutes) can range from minimum of 3 to maximum of 12.
   The other lower-level matches or friendly matches are more lenient in terms of substitution, and it’s usually up to both team and the referee to agree prior to the kick-off.

3. Ball in or out of play
   Half the ball must cross the goal line or touch line in order for the ball to be considered out of play.
   Obviously the opponent of the last person that touched the ball will be awarded with the throw-in (if the ball went out at the touch line) or goal-kick (if the ball went out at the goal line).
   However, in soccer, the referee is considered an “object”, so the referee’s intervention is ignored. This means if the ball hits the referee and gone out of play, the opponent of the player that touched the ball before the referee would be awarded with the throw-in or goal-kick.

4. Fouls
   Now it gets more exciting! Controversial subject number one – fouls. The detailed list of fouls is a 4-page-documentation in the official FIFA rulebook, but in general if a player did or attempt to do the following to an opponent recklessly, it’s a foul:
   • Kicks
   • Trips
   • Jumps at
   • Charges at
   • Strikes
   • Pushes
   • Tackles

5. Goals
   What’s there for fans to cheer for if it wasn’t the goals? This brings us to the controversial subject number two.
   In order for it to be counted as a goal, the entire ball must cross the goal line. The attacker can use any body parts, except his hands, to push the ball through the goal line in order to score. This is provided that there was not a foul beforehand.
   The referee, with the help of his assistants, will decide if a goal is given.

There you go! These are the basic rules of soccer and we hope it helps you understand a bit more about the game.
“Hey wait, didn’t you say controversial?”
Right, so what makes Fouls and Goals rules so controversial? This is something that FIFA has failed miserably, we feel.

FIFA, for all the years they’ve been in-charged, has been rejecting TV replay as an aid to refereeing decisions during a game. TV replay has been implemented in many different sports and proven to be a very solid solution, but FIFA just refused to go for it.

This resulted in match decisions being heavily (or solely) reliant on referee, and this can be very subjective. Many times we have seen clearly that referees made the wrong decisions (they are human, after all), which often changed the outcome of the game.

Millions of dollars were put into the development of Goal-line Technology (GLT). It was tested for years and only released recently, with very low adoption rate. All these could’ve been easily resolved with the implementation of TV replay years ago.

Despite the room for improvements, soccer is still a beautiful game that we enjoy a lot, and we hope you feel the same too!