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.

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.

A list of specific offences that can be fouls are detailed in Law 12 of the Laws of the Game (other infractions, such as technical infractions at restarts, are not deemed to be fouls); these mostly concern unnecessarily aggressive physical play and the offence of handling the ball.

[1] Misconduct is any conduct by a player that is deemed by the referee to warrant a disciplinary sanction (caution or send-off).

However, if the player has positioned their arm so as to make their body "unnaturally bigger" and contact occurs, this is considered handball.

If the goalkeeper handles the ball inside the penalty area when not allowed to do so, an indirect free kick is awarded.

[4] Direct free kicks are also awarded for holding an opponent, impeding them with contact, biting or spitting at other persons, throwing an object (other than the ball) at an opponent or match official, or making contact with the ball with a held object.

Indirect free kicks are taken from the place where the offence occurred, even if it was inside the offending player's penalty area.

The referee may consider serious or persistent offences to be misconduct worthy of an official caution or dismissal from the game.

Players can be cautioned and shown a yellow card if they commit the following offences: There are also two offences which apply in matches using the video assistant referee system: What constitutes cautionable unsporting behaviour is generally at the referee's discretion, though Law 12 lists a number of examples.

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 the UEFA Champions League, for instance, accumulating two yellow cards in a tournament stage will lead to a one-game suspension.

UEFA has occasionally acted on such choices and has given additional fines and/or suspensions to the players and managers involved.

[8][9][10][11][12] In 2017 IFAB approved temporary dismissals (sin-bins) for cautionable offences similar to that seen in other sports; however, this is only permitted for youth, veterans, disability and grassroots football.

Starting in August 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, IFAB and the Football Association stated that any player who deliberately coughs at others will receive a straight red card.

[15] The practice of cautioning and excluding players who make serious breaches of the rules has been part of the Laws of the Game since 1881.

After the match, newspaper reports stated that referee Rudolf Kreitlein had cautioned both Bobby and Jack Charlton, as well as sending off Argentine Antonio Rattín.

The referee had not made his decision clear during the game, and England manager Alf Ramsey approached FIFA for post-match clarification.

This incident started Aston thinking about ways to make a referee's decisions clearer to both players and spectators.

[20] The referee has a certain degree of discretion as to the enforcement of the 17 Laws including determining which acts constitute cautionable offences under the very broad categories.

However, according to Law 5 the referee could caution or dismiss team officials from their technical areas and immediate surroundings (which was still sometimes colloquially referred to as a "sending off").

Typically, these take the form of suspending a player from playing in his team's next game(s) after reaching a particular number of cautions.

[22] Similarly, a direct red card usually also results in additional sanctions, most commonly in the form of suspensions from playing for a number of future games, although financial fines may also be imposed.

FIFA in particular has been adamant that a red card in any football competition must result in the guilty player being suspended for at least the next game, with the only grounds of appeal being mistaken identity.

As a result, only players that received a red card (whether directly or after a second booking) in the semifinal game would not be able to play in the final.