Football Tackling Rules: What Makes a Tackle a Foul
Football tackling rules as English referees apply them under Law 12: slide tackles, two-footed lunges, challenges from behind and red cards.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Referees, VAR & Laws24 min read
- Governing Law
- Law 12
- Bands of force
- 3
- Tackle-from-behind instruction
- 1998
- FA ban for serious foul play
- 3 matches
"He got the ball, ref." It is shouted from every touchline in England each weekend, on park pitches run by County FAs and at grounds in the Premier League, and it is not a defence. Nothing in Law 12 of the Laws of the Game says that winning the ball makes a tackle fair. The words do not appear.
What the Law asks is how the challenge was made. A tackle is a foul if the referee considers it careless, reckless or made with excessive force. Careless brings a direct free kick. Reckless brings a free kick and a yellow card. Excessive force, or a challenge that endangers an opponent's safety, is serious foul play and a red card. A player can take the ball cleanly and still commit any of the three, and a player can miss the ball entirely without committing a foul at all, provided he does not catch the opponent either.
Why winning the ball does not make a tackle legal
Law 12 lists seven things a player may not do to an opponent "in a manner considered by the referee to be careless, reckless or using excessive force": charge, jump at, kick or attempt to kick, push, strike or attempt to strike, tackle or challenge, and trip or attempt to trip. Any of them is a direct free kick, or, if committed by a defender in his own area, a penalty taken under the penalty kick rules.
Read the sentence again and notice what is missing. There is no reference to the ball. The offence is defined by the manner of the act and the judgement of the referee. A defender who goes through the back of a forward's standing leg and pokes the ball away has tackled carelessly at the least. The touch on the ball is evidence about his intent and his timing. It settles nothing.
The glossary at the back of the Laws defines a tackle as "a challenge for the ball with the foot (on the ground or in the air)". That is the whole definition. It says what a tackle is and leaves fairness to the three bands.
Where the "ball first" idea came from
It was not invented on the terraces. For a period around the 1997 rewrite of the Laws, Law 12 carried a separate offence: tackling an opponent to gain possession of the ball and making contact with the opponent before touching the ball. A generation of players and coaches absorbed that as a rule of thumb. Man first, foul. Ball first, fair.
The line was later dropped, when "tackles" was folded into the list of offences judged on carelessness, recklessness and force. The folk version survived the text it came from by many years. It also only ever ran one way: even under the old wording, getting the ball first never excused what a player did next.
A fair statement of the present position is this. Playing the ball is necessary for most clean tackles and sufficient for none of them.
Careless, reckless, excessive force: the three bands
Every contact offence in the game runs through one grading system. The definitions are in Law 12 and have been stable for years.
| Band | Definition in Law 12 | Restart | Sanction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fair challenge | Not careless, reckless or using excessive force | Play continues | None |
| Careless | A lack of attention or consideration, or acting without precaution | Direct free kick or penalty | None |
| Reckless | Acting with disregard to the danger to, or consequences for, an opponent | Direct free kick or penalty | Yellow card |
| Excessive force | Exceeding the necessary use of force or endangering the safety of an opponent | Direct free kick or penalty | Red card |
The step from one band to the next is a step in what the player ought to have known. A careless tackler misjudged it. A reckless tackler saw the risk and went anyway. A player using excessive force did something no reasonable footballer would regard as a controlled attempt to win the ball.
None of the three requires intent to hurt. A referee does not need to believe a player meant to injure an opponent before sending him off, and "he's not that type of player" is as irrelevant in Law as "he got the ball".
- 3Bands of force
- 7Contact offences graded on them
- 1998Year of the tackle-from-behind instruction
- 3Matches banned for serious foul play in England
Fixed features of the 2026/27 Laws of the Game and the FA's standard disciplinary tariff. The seven offences are charging, jumping at, kicking, pushing, striking, tackling and tripping.
Cards that have nothing to do with force
A second layer of sanctions sits on top of the bands and confuses the picture. A careless trip, which on its own merits no card, earns a yellow if it stops a promising attack, and a red if it denies an obvious goal-scoring opportunity outside the penalty area. Those cards punish the tactical effect of the foul. They say nothing about how dangerous it was.
So a gentle tug that ends a counter-attack can bring the same yellow card as a studs-up challenge that happened to land low. Supporters comparing the two are comparing different offences. The tactical side is covered in our guide to the DOGSO rule, and what happens to these cards when the referee waves play on is in our page on the advantage rule.
Serious foul play: the challenge that endangers an opponent
The red-card offence has its own paragraph in Law 12. "A tackle or challenge that endangers the safety of an opponent or uses excessive force or brutality must be sanctioned as serious foul play." A second sentence fills in the picture: any player who lunges at an opponent in challenging for the ball from the front, from the side or from behind, using one or both legs, with excessive force or in a way that endangers the safety of an opponent, is guilty of it.
Two features define the offence.
It has to happen in a challenge for the ball, with the ball in play. A kick aimed at an opponent when the ball is forty yards away is violent conduct, which is a different heading with the same colour of card. The split between the two is explained in our guide to Premier League suspension rules.
And "endangers" is about risk. The opponent does not have to be hurt. A lunge that misses by an inch because the other player jumped out of the way can still be serious foul play, though in practice referees send off for contact and caution for the near miss. Equally, an injury does not prove the offence. Players are hurt in fair challenges every week.
The three-match ban
In England a sending-off for serious foul play carries a standard suspension of three matches under the FA's disciplinary regulations, the same as violent conduct and two more than a dismissal for a second caution or for denying a goal-scoring opportunity.
A club that believes the referee got it badly wrong can bring a claim of wrongful dismissal. The test is a high one, an obvious error, and a regulatory commission does not replace a referee's view of force with its own merely because it would have judged the tackle differently.
What referees look at when they judge a tackle
No referee has time to recite Law 12 in the half second a challenge takes. What they carry instead is a set of considerations, taught to referees in England from grassroots courses upwards, that map what the eye sees onto the three bands.
| Consideration | Points towards a lower band | Points towards serious foul play |
|---|---|---|
| Speed | Arriving at jogging pace, or slowing into the challenge | Arriving at a sprint |
| Distance travelled | A step or two | A run of several yards before the lunge |
| Height of contact | Foot or ankle, on the ground | Shin, knee or above |
| Part of the boot | Instep, laces or toe | Studs leading |
| Leg position | Bent knee that gives on contact | Straight, locked leg |
| Control | Grounded, able to pull out | Airborne or sliding with no way of stopping |
| Opponent's leg | Free to move | Planted, bearing weight |
No single entry decides it. A studs-first contact on the top of a boot at walking pace is a yellow card at most. A side-of-the-foot contact at a full sprint into a planted shin can be a red.
Referees are taught to ask one compound question: did the player have the ability to control the outcome? Somebody who has jumped in from four yards has made every decision he is going to make before he arrives. If the opponent moves the ball, the tackler cannot adjust. Whatever happens next has been left to luck, and Law 12's word for leaving an opponent's safety to luck is reckless at best.
- Was there contact with the opponentNo contact and no danger means no offence. No contact but a nearby opponent put off by a raised boot may be dangerous play.
- Was it avoidableA challenge made with normal care that still results in a coming together is part of the game.
- CarelessThe player mistimed it or failed to take precautions. Direct free kick, no card for the force.
- RecklessThe player disregarded an obvious risk to the opponent. Free kick and a caution.
- Endangering safetySpeed, height, studs and a lack of control together put the opponent at real risk of injury. Free kick and a sending-off.
- Tactical effectSeparately, check whether the foul stopped a promising attack or denied an obvious chance to score.
A teaching sequence, not text from the Laws. Each step corresponds to a term defined in Law 12.
The planted leg
Of all the entries in that table, the last is the one medical staff care about most. A leg that is swinging or lifting moves with a blow. A leg with the player's full weight on it does not, and the force goes into the ankle, the shin or the knee. A challenge that would be a caution against a free leg is often a red card against a standing one, which is why two tackles that look alike in a photograph can properly be given different cards.
Slide tackle rules in the eleven-a-side game
There is no slide tackle law. Sliding is a way of making a tackle, the Laws of the Game do not mention it, and so it is legal wherever Law 12 applies unamended. That means every adult eleven-a-side competition in England, and the youth formats too, since the FA's modifications for younger age groups change pitch sizes, team numbers and match lengths without removing the tackle.
The slide is judged by the same three bands as everything else. What makes it distinctive is commitment. A standing tackler can withdraw a foot. A sliding one is travelling along the ground with his weight behind his legs and cannot stop.
That gives the slide tackle two legitimate uses and one illegitimate one. It is a fine way to block a pass or a shot, where there is no opponent in the path of the slide. It is a good way to take the ball off the toe of a player running alongside, where the tackler comes across from the side with a bent leading leg and hooks the ball away. It is a poor way to arrive front-on at speed at a player who is standing over the ball.
The follow-through
Old Trafford, the City Ground, Elland Road in the 1970s: the slide tackle that took ball, man and a yard of turf was applauded. The modern Law looks at the half second after the ball is won.
A defender slides, gets a firm touch that sends the ball away, and his momentum carries his trailing leg or his raised studs into the opponent's shin. Under the old "ball first" thinking that was a clean tackle. Under Law 12 as written it is a foul if the contact was careless, a caution if reckless and a sending-off if it endangered the opponent, and the touch on the ball changes none of it.
Referees are taught to judge the whole action. The useful test is whether the contact with the opponent was an unavoidable result of both players going for the ball, or the predictable result of the way the tackler chose to go in. A slide with a bent leg that collapses on contact is the first. A slide with a locked leg and studs showing is the second.
Wet pitches
A greasy surface is no excuse. Law 12 has no allowance for conditions, and a player sliding on wet grass travels further and faster and has less control, so the duty to take account of that falls on the tackler. On the heavy pitches of a lower-league or grassroots winter, a referee who expects a lot of sliding will often set the tolerance early in the match with a word or a first caution.
Two-footed and airborne challenges
The Laws do not ban the two-footed tackle by name. They do not need to. The serious foul play paragraph refers to a lunge "using one or both legs", and the mechanics of jumping in with both feet answer nearly every question a referee would ask.
A player who leaves the ground with both feet has no standing leg. He cannot brake, steer or pull out. His whole body weight is behind his feet, and his feet, in that position, almost always lead with the studs. Go back to the table of considerations: control, absent; studs, showing; force, everything he has. Three entries out of seven are settled before any contact is made.
That is why referees treat a two-footed lunge at an opponent as a loss of control in itself, and why it is so rarely a yellow card. The outcome depends entirely on where the opponent's legs happen to be.
Three qualifications keep this from being an automatic rule.
- The opponent has to be within range. A defender who throws both feet at a ball to block a clearance, with nobody near him, has endangered no one.
- Both feet on the ground is different from both feet in the air. A player who slides with one leg tucked under him and the other extended has two legs involved without the scissor or the stamp that makes the airborne version dangerous.
- A challenge with both feet that makes no contact is still punishable. Lunging and missing is an attempt, and a reckless or dangerous attempt can be carded.
One-footed challenges can be just as bad. A straight-legged jump with the studs of one boot into a shin is serious foul play, and the fact that the other foot was trailing does not improve it. The number of feet tells the referee about control. The danger comes from speed, height and studs.
The tackle from behind: the 1998 instruction and today's wording
Ahead of the 1998 World Cup in France, the International Football Association Board issued a decision that changed how the game was played. A tackle from behind which endangered the safety of an opponent was to be sanctioned as serious foul play. Referees at the tournament were told to send players off for it.
It was aimed at a specific habit. Through the 1970s and 1980s, the standard way to stop a gifted forward who had turned was to go through the back of him. The 1970 FA Cup final replay between Chelsea and Leeds United at Old Trafford is the usual exhibit: one caution on the night, and when the former Premier League referee David Elleray reviewed the film in the 1990s he counted, by his own reckoning, six red-card offences and twenty yellows.
The instruction worked. Defenders learned to stay on their feet behind a forward and jockey him, the challenge through the Achilles became rare, and players whose whole game was receiving the ball with their back to goal lasted longer for it.
What the Law says now
The standalone decision has gone. Its content was absorbed into the general definition, which now covers a lunge "from the front, from the side or from behind". Direction is listed only to make clear that it does not matter. Danger does.
So a tackle from behind is not a foul in itself. A defender who comes from behind a dribbler, gets alongside and toes the ball away without touching him has made a fair tackle. A defender who reaches a leg around from behind and takes the ball with minimal contact has probably been careless at worst.
What makes the challenge from behind more dangerous in practice is that the player on the ball cannot see it. He cannot brace, jump or ride it. His weight is usually on one leg, and the contact tends to land on the Achilles tendon or the calf. Referees therefore need less of everything else, less speed and less height, before a tackle from the blind side reaches the reckless band. The Law is neutral about direction and the injuries are not.
The fair charge: shoulder to shoulder, and when a barge becomes a push
Charging is the only item on the list of seven that the game positively expects players to do. The glossary defines it as a physical challenge against an opponent, usually using the shoulder and upper arm, which is kept close to the body. Law 12 says elsewhere that a player shielding the ball within playing distance "may be fairly charged".
Three conditions make a charge fair, and all come from the Laws and their definitions.
The ball must be within playing distance. That phrase has its own glossary entry: the distance that allows a player to touch the ball by extending a foot or leg, or by jumping. Shoulder a player off a ball that is five yards away and it is no longer a charge for the ball. If the contact is slight it is impeding with contact, and if not it is a careless charge. A direct free kick follows in both cases.
The contact must be shoulder to shoulder, or close to it. A charge into the back or the chest meets a part of the body that cannot absorb it. The upper arm stays in. Once the elbow comes out or the forearm extends, the referee is looking at a push or a strike.
The force must be proportionate. Two players running side by side and leaning into each other is the picture of a fair charge. One player arriving from three yards and launching himself sideways into a stationary opponent has charged in the legal sense and done it recklessly.
The line between a charge and a push is the arms. A push uses the hands or extended arms to move an opponent. A charge uses body weight through the shoulder. Referees watching two players chase a long ball look at the hands first.
English football kept the shoulder charge longer and more fondly than most countries. The 1958 FA Cup final was settled in part by one: Nat Lofthouse of Bolton Wanderers bundled the Manchester United goalkeeper Harry Gregg over the line as he gathered the ball, and the goal stood. It would not stand now, for reasons that have to do with the goalkeeper and are set out below.
The high boot and the fifty-fifty
Law 12 has an offence that requires no contact at all. Playing in a dangerous manner is "any action that, while trying to play the ball, threatens injury to someone (including the player themself) and includes preventing a nearby opponent from playing the ball for fear of injury". It is punished with an indirect free kick.
The raised boot near an opponent's head is the standard case. A forward goes to head a bouncing ball and a defender swings a foot at chest height. The forward pulls out. No contact, no injury, and an indirect free kick, because the defender's action stopped the forward from playing the ball for fear of being hurt.
Contact changes the offence. The same boot that catches the forward is a kick, which is on the list of seven, and it is then graded like any other challenge.
| Situation | Contact | Offence | Restart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boot raised near an opponent who pulls out | None | Playing in a dangerous manner | Indirect free kick |
| Boot raised, catches the opponent lightly | Yes | Careless kick | Direct free kick |
| Studs into the chest or head | Yes | Reckless or serious foul play | Direct free kick, yellow or red card |
| Player stoops to head a ball at boot height | None | Dangerous play by the player stooping | Indirect free kick against him |
| Overhead kick with nobody close | None | No offence | Play continues |
The fourth row surprises people. The definition includes danger to "the player themself", so a forward who dives to head a ball that a defender is already swinging at along the ground can be the one penalised. The Laws also say in terms that a scissors or bicycle kick is permissible provided it is not dangerous to an opponent.
The most replayed example involved an English referee. In the 2010 World Cup final Nigel de Jong of the Netherlands planted his studs in the chest of Spain's Xabi Alonso, and Howard Webb showed a yellow card. Webb said afterwards that, having seen it again, it should have been red. It was a kick with contact, at a height and with a force that endangered safety, and it was misjudged in real time from an angle that hid the point of contact.
The fifty-fifty
Two players arriving at a loose ball at the same moment, both entitled to go for it. This is where most serious injuries in tackles happen and where the Law is hardest to apply, because both players are, in the old phrase, going for the ball.
The bands still decide it. If both go in low with the side of the foot, any collision is a coming together. If one goes over the top of the ball, studs first, he has committed serious foul play regardless of what the other did. If both do, both can be sent off. Equal right to the ball is not equal right to go for it in any manner.
Challenges on the goalkeeper
Law 12 is blunt here. "A goalkeeper cannot be challenged by an opponent when in control of the ball with their hand(s)/arm(s)." Not carefully, not fairly, not shoulder to shoulder. Any challenge is an offence.
The argument is therefore always about what control means, and the Law defines it. A goalkeeper is in control of the ball when:
- the ball is between the hands or arms, or between a hand or arm and any surface, such as the ground or the goalkeeper's own body;
- the goalkeeper is holding the ball in an outstretched open hand;
- the goalkeeper is bouncing it on the ground or throwing it in the air.
One hand on top of a ball lying on the turf is control. An attacker who kicks it out from under that hand has committed an offence, even if the goalkeeper's grip looked loose.
A ball that has rebounded from the goalkeeper, or that the goalkeeper has parried in making a save, is not controlled. It is loose, and a forward may challenge for it under the same three bands as anywhere else on the pitch. This is the goalmouth scramble, and referees give goalkeepers a degree of protection in it that the text does not strictly promise.
A related offence carries an indirect free kick: preventing the goalkeeper from releasing the ball from the hands, or kicking or trying to kick it during the release. The forward who stands in front of a goalkeeper preparing to punt, or who sticks out a leg as the ball is dropped, is penalised under that heading.
In the air, a goalkeeper jumping for a cross is in the same legal position as any other player until the ball is caught. He can be fairly challenged for a ball he has not yet got. In practice English referees penalise almost any contact with a goalkeeper at full stretch, on the reasoning that a player with both arms above his head cannot protect himself.
How VAR changed the judging of tackles
Serious foul play is a direct red card, and direct red cards are one of the categories a video assistant referee may review. Reckless challenges are not: a yellow card for a tackle is outside the protocol unless the VAR thinks it should have been red, or unless, from the 2026/27 edition, it was a clearly incorrect second caution that sent the player off. The broader system is described in our guide to how VAR works in the Premier League.
That has produced a one-way ratchet. A VAR can recommend upgrading a yellow card or a missed foul to a red, and can recommend downgrading a red. It cannot recommend a yellow where the referee gave nothing. So the only tackles that get a second look are the ones on the border of the top band.
Slow motion and full speed
The protocol contains a sentence written with tackles in mind. Slow-motion replays should be used only for facts, such as the position of an offence and the point of contact for physical offences. Normal speed should be used for the intensity of an offence.
The reason is that slow motion lies about force. A challenge replayed at quarter speed looks deliberate, lingering and worse than it was. A still frame is worse again: studs on a shin, frozen, with no information about how fast the boot arrived or how quickly it left.
On 30 September 2023, Liverpool's Curtis Jones was cautioned for a challenge at Tottenham in which his foot rolled over the top of the ball and on to an opponent's shin. The referee was sent to the monitor, where the images included a freeze frame of the contact, and the yellow became a red. Whatever the merits of the decision, the use of the still image was criticised widely, including by former referees, and it is a clear case of the problem the protocol's wording was meant to prevent.
- CheckThe VAR looks at every challenge that might be serious foul play, usually without the game stopping.
- ThresholdA review is recommended only if the on-field decision looks like a clear and obvious error.
- Point of contactSlow motion and stills establish where on the opponent's body the contact landed.
- IntensityFull-speed footage shows how hard and how fast the challenge was.
- MonitorThe referee watches both at the pitchside screen.
- DecisionThe referee keeps or changes the card and play restarts accordingly.
The process set out in the VAR protocol in the Laws of the Game. The final decision always belongs to the referee.
The lasting effect has been on the point of contact. Before video review, a referee who saw a low-looking challenge at speed from fifteen yards gave a yellow card and moved on. Now, in competitions with VAR, the height of contact is a checkable fact, and tackles that land above the ankle with studs are easier to send off consistently. Players have adjusted. The tackle over the ball, once a known way of leaving something on an opponent, carries a risk of detection it never used to.
Where sliding is banned in England
Everything above applies to football under the unamended Laws. A large share of the football actually played in England each week is not that.
| Format | Sliding tackles | Where the rule comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Eleven-a-side, adult and youth | Allowed, judged under Law 12 | Laws of the Game |
| Futsal | Allowed under the current futsal laws, judged on the same bands | FIFA Futsal Laws of the Game |
| Commercial five-a-side and six-a-side leagues | Commonly banned | The operator's own competition rules |
| Indoor sports-hall leagues | Commonly banned | Local league rules |
| Walking football | Banned | Walking Football Laws of the Game |
Small-sided football is where the ban is most familiar. The big commercial operators and most local leagues write "no slide tackles" into their rules, usually with a free kick as the penalty and sometimes with a wider prohibition on going to ground at all, so that a sliding block counts as an offence even with no opponent near. The details differ from league to league, and a player joining a new one should read the rule sheet instead of assuming.
The reasons given are consistent. The surfaces are artificial or wooden, and a slide on either takes skin off. The pitches are small and enclosed by boards or fencing, so a sliding player and his opponent have nowhere to go. The games are recreational, mixed in age and fitness, refereed by one official with no assistants, and played by people who have work in the morning.
Futsal is the exception that confuses people. It is the small-sided game with a full international rulebook, and for many years that rulebook prohibited the sliding tackle outright. The futsal laws were later amended so that a slide is judged on carelessness, recklessness and force, as it is outdoors. A five-a-side league that calls itself futsal may or may not follow that.
Walking football goes furthest. The format was developed for older players and for people returning to exercise, and its laws remove running, restrict physical contact to a minimum and prohibit sliding tackles. The whole format is designed around reducing the chance of a fall.
At the other end, the adult recreational eleven-a-side game, described in our guide to Sunday league football, is played under Law 12 in full. The slide tackle is legal there on a frozen January pitch with one referee and no VAR, which is where most of England's tackles are judged and where "he got the ball" is still heard most. Further reading on the sport is in our football section, and the full set of English guides is listed on the England hub.