Indirect Free Kick Rules: What It Is and When It's Given

The indirect free kick rules are short. An indirect free kick is a free kick from which a goal counts only if the ball touches a second player, of either team, before crossing the goal line. It is awarded for offences that involve no contact and no handball offence: offside, dangerous play without contact, impeding without contact, dissent, the goalkeeper's handling offences inside the penalty area and a player touching the ball twice at a restart. Kick it straight into the opponents' net and the goal is disallowed and a goal kick given. The referee signals it by holding an arm above the head. The rules sit in Laws 12 and 13 of the Laws of the Game, written by the International Football Association Board and applied in England by the FA at every level from the Premier League down to Sunday morning.

A goalkeeper at Hackney Marshes picks up a ball his left-back has passed to him with the side of the foot, inside the six-yard box. The referee blows, walks to the edge of the box and puts the ball down on the white line, five and a half metres from goal. Ten players in red file onto the goal line between the posts. The referee's right arm goes up and stays there. Nearly everything distinctive about the indirect free kick is visible in that one scene.

What an indirect free kick is, and what is given when one goes straight in

Law 13 divides free kicks into two kinds and defines them by what each can produce. A direct free kick can be scored straight from the kick. An indirect free kick cannot. "A goal can be scored only if the ball subsequently touches another player before it enters the goal" is the whole of the defining sentence, and every other part of the procedure follows from it.

The second touch can come from anyone. A team-mate's glance counts. So does the faintest brush off a defender in the wall, or the goalkeeper getting a fingertip to a shot that then spins in. Referees are asked whether the ball touched another player, not whether it was played, and a deflection off a shin that nobody intended is as good as a header.

The two restarts when nobody touches it

If nobody touches the ball, the result depends on which net it enters:

Where the ball goes, untouched	Decision	Restart
Into the opponents' goal	No goal	Goal kick to the defending team
Into the kicker's own goal	No goal	Corner kick to the opponents
Over the opponents' goal line, wide	Out of play	Goal kick
Over the kicker's own goal line, wide	Out of play	Corner kick
Into the goal after touching any player	Goal	Kick-off

The own-goal row looks theoretical. It is not quite. A defending team awarded an indirect free kick near its own goal, perhaps for an attacker's dangerous play, sometimes plays the ball back towards its goalkeeper; if the goalkeeper misses it completely and it rolls in, the Laws treat it the same way they treat a direct kick into one's own net and award a corner rather than a goal. The same rule applies to direct free kicks, and to throw-ins and goal kicks. Nobody can score against themselves from a restart without a second touch.

The awkward case is the goalkeeper who instinctively palms an indirect free kick that was going in. Strictly the touch makes it a goal, because the ball has touched another player. Goalkeepers are coached to let an untouched indirect free kick go into the net for exactly that reason, and the ones who were never told learn the rule by conceding.

There is no scoring value in the second touch itself. The goal belongs to whoever last played the ball in the ordinary way, so a deflection off a defender is recorded as the kicker's goal or an own goal by the usual conventions of the competition, not under any special indirect rule.

Direct against indirect: contact and handball on one side, technical offences on the other

The easiest way to remember the split is by its logic rather than its list. A direct free kick is the remedy for an offence against a person: contact made carelessly, recklessly or with excessive force, or a deliberate act such as holding, spitting or handling. An indirect free kick is the remedy for an offence against the game: something that breaks a rule without injuring or impeding anyone physically, or a technical breach at a restart.

Offence	Free kick	Penalty if inside the offender's own area
Tripping, pushing, kicking or tackling carelessly	Direct	Yes
Holding an opponent	Direct	Yes
Impeding an opponent with contact	Direct	Yes
Handball	Direct	Yes
Impeding without contact	Indirect	No, indirect kick from where it happened
Playing in a dangerous manner without contact	Indirect	No
Dissent or offensive language	Indirect	No
Offside	Indirect	Not applicable
Touching the ball twice at a restart	Indirect	No
Goalkeeper handling a team-mate's deliberate kick	Indirect	No

The right-hand column is the practical consequence. Only a direct free kick offence committed by a defender inside his own penalty area produces a penalty kick. An indirect offence in the same place produces an indirect free kick from the same place, which is a very different thing to defend against.

The offence that falls between the two

Handball by the goalkeeper deserves a line of its own because it confuses people. A goalkeeper who handles outside the penalty area commits ordinary handball, which is direct. A goalkeeper who handles inside his own area when the Laws forbid it, after a back-pass for instance, commits a separate goalkeeper offence, which is indirect. Same hands, same ball, a few yards apart, different restart. Contact offences are dealt with in full in our guide to football tackling rules; this page stays with the other column.

A rule of thumb that holds almost everywhere: if the referee is likely to need a physio's opinion, it is direct. If the referee is more likely to need the book, it is indirect.

The outfield offences on the indirect list

Law 12 names a short list of offences that are penalised with an indirect free kick when committed by an outfield player. In the current edition it reads, in substance:

• playing in a dangerous manner;
• impeding the progress of an opponent without any contact being made;
• dissent, offensive, insulting or abusive language or gestures, and other verbal offences;
• preventing the goalkeeper from releasing the ball from the hands, or kicking or attempting to kick the ball while the goalkeeper is releasing it;
• initiating a deliberate trick to pass the ball to the goalkeeper with the head, chest or knee to get round the back-pass restriction;
• any other offence not mentioned in the Laws for which play is stopped to caution or send off a player.

Dangerous play and impeding each get a section of their own further down, because they cause most of the arguments.

Dissent and language

Dissent is one of the commonest cautions in English football, and the indirect free kick is what follows it when the referee stops play to deal with it. If a player is booked for dissent while the ball is already dead, after a foul or a goal, the original restart stands; the indirect free kick arises only when play was running and the referee stopped it for the dissent itself. Offensive, insulting or abusive language is a sending-off offence, and the restart, if play was stopped for it, is again an indirect free kick. In grassroots football in England the dissent caution sends the player to the sin bin for a period, a scheme explained in our guide to sin bin rules in football.

Preventing the goalkeeper releasing the ball

A goalkeeper holding the ball is in control of it and cannot be challenged. An attacker who stands directly in front of the goalkeeper and shuffles across to block a throw or a kick commits an offence. So does one who kicks at the ball as the goalkeeper drops it for a volley, or heads it out of an open palm. The goalkeeper is still "in control" while bouncing the ball or throwing it up to catch it, and the attacker who nicks it in that moment has his goal disallowed and concedes an indirect free kick. Supporters often think this is a goalkeeper being protected for the sake of it. The rule exists because the alternative is a stream of collisions at the moment the goalkeeper is least able to protect himself.

The catch-all

The last item is the least visible and the most useful. A player who commits an offence the Laws punish with a card but give no specific restart for still has to give the game a way to restart, and that way is an indirect free kick. It is the Laws' default. Law 3 uses the same restart for a player who comes back onto the field without the referee's permission: if he interferes with play the free kick is direct, and if he does not, it is indirect and taken from where the ball was when play stopped. All verbal offences, whoever they are aimed at, are penalised with an indirect free kick.

The goalkeeper's own offences

Three offences apply only to the goalkeeper and only inside the goalkeeper's own penalty area. Each results in an indirect free kick. None carries a card on its own.

The goalkeeper may not handle the ball:

1. after releasing it and before it has touched another player;
2. after it has been deliberately kicked to the goalkeeper by a team-mate;
3. after receiving it directly from a throw-in taken by a team-mate.

The first is the rarest. A goalkeeper who drops the ball to dribble it, or throws it out, cannot then pick it up again until someone else has played it. The second and third make up the back-pass restriction, introduced in 1992 and extended to throw-ins in 1997. The current text excuses a goalkeeper who has clearly kicked, or tried to kick, the ball to release it into play before handling it. The full story, including what counts as a deliberate kick and why the headed back-pass is legal, is in our guide to the back-pass rule in football.

There used to be a fourth. Until the 2025-26 edition of the Laws a goalkeeper who held the ball for more than six seconds conceded an indirect free kick, a sanction referees almost never applied because it handed attackers a shot at goal from inside the area for an offence nobody in the ground had noticed. The Board replaced it with an eight-second limit, the last five of which the referee counts down with a raised hand, and changed the punishment to a corner kick. That is a better match between offence and remedy, and it removed one of the few indirect offences that could produce a free kick a few yards from goal. Our guide to the goalkeeper eight-second rule covers the countdown.

Why no card

The goalkeeper's handling offences are treated as technical breaches rather than misconduct. The Laws say so explicitly: if the goalkeeper handles the ball inside the penalty area when not permitted to, an indirect free kick is awarded but there is no disciplinary sanction. A goalkeeper who picks up a back-pass to stop an opponent running through is not booked for it. The single exception covers the goalkeeper who plays the ball a second time after a restart, with or without the hands, before anyone else touches it: if that second touch stops a promising attack or denies a goal-scoring opportunity, the card follows as it would for anyone.

Offside and the second touch: the two commonest indirect free kicks

On an ordinary Saturday in the Premier League, the indirect free kicks that actually happen are almost all of one kind. A flag goes up for offside and play restarts with a defender tapping the ball forward from somewhere near the halfway line. Nobody watching thinks of it as an indirect free kick at all, but under Law 11 that is exactly what it is.

Offside

Offside is not a foul. It is a positional offence committed by an attacker who becomes involved in play from an offside position, and the Laws penalise it with an indirect free kick to the defending team from the place where the attacker became involved. Since 2016 that place can be in the attacker's own half; an attacker who drifts back from an offside position and plays the ball in his own half is penalised where he played it. The location matters more than it once did, because a long ball cleared in panic and picked up by an attacker who was offside gives the defending team a free kick deep in their own territory, not one from where the ball was kicked.

How offside is judged, and how semi-automated tracking is changing it, are covered in our guide to semi-automated offside technology.

The second touch at a restart

Every restart in football is taken by one player who may not touch the ball again until another player has. A free kick, a corner, a goal kick, a kick-off, a throw-in, a penalty: touch it twice and the opponents get an indirect free kick. The offence is mostly committed by accident. A corner taker plays a short corner, gets the return, and has in fact touched it twice if the first tap never travelled to a team-mate. A goal kick dribbled out of the area by the goalkeeper who took it is a second touch.

If the second touch is with the hand, the offence becomes handball and the free kick is direct, or a penalty if it happens inside the offender's own area. A corner taker who handles the ball as it comes back off the post concedes a direct free kick. The rule has one more twist for penalties, clarified by the Board in its circular no. 31 of June 2025 after a slip in a Champions League shoot-out and written into the 2026-27 Laws: a kicker who touches the ball twice by accident in the same movement, for instance by slipping and striking it with both feet, has the kick retaken if it went in, and an indirect free kick awarded against him if it did not. In a shoot-out, where there is no free kick to give, the unsuccessful kick is recorded as missed. The details are in our guide to penalty kick rules.

1. 1Flag raisedThe assistant referee holds the flag up when the offside player becomes involved in play.
2. 2Referee stops playThe referee whistles and raises an arm vertically above the head.
3. 3Place fixedThe kick is placed where the offside player became involved, which can be in that player's own half.
4. 4Kick takenA defender restarts. Opponents must be 9.15 metres away unless the kick is taken quickly.
5. 5Signal loweredThe arm comes down once the ball has touched another player or left the field.

The sequence under Law 11 and Law 13 for an offside offence in open play. The steps are the procedure, not timings; the kick may be taken quickly before opponents retreat.

The raised arm: the signal, how long it lasts and what happens if it is forgotten

The signal is set out in Law 13, not left to custom. "The referee indicates an indirect free kick by raising the arm above the head." The arm is held there until one of three things happens: the kick has been taken and the ball has touched another player, the ball has gone out of play, or it is clear that a goal cannot be scored directly.

That third condition is a sensible piece of drafting. An indirect free kick on the halfway line, played sideways to a centre-back, cannot plausibly go into the goal, and a referee who kept his arm aloft while the centre-back carried the ball forward would look ridiculous. Once the danger of a direct goal has passed, the arm can come down.

When the arm never goes up

Referees forget. The Laws provide for it, and the answer is neat. If the referee fails to signal that the kick is indirect and the ball is kicked directly into the goal, the kick is retaken. The goal is not given, because a goal can never be scored directly from an indirect free kick. Nor does the defending team get the goal kick it would ordinarily receive, because it was the referee's failure that misled the kicker, and a kicker who could see no raised arm was entitled to think the kick was direct.

The same reasoning does not run in reverse. A referee who wrongly raises an arm for a direct free kick has not taken away the kicker's right to score; a direct kick that goes in counts regardless of what the referee's arm was doing.

Assistants and the arm

Assistant referees have no indirect signal of their own. They signal an offence with the flag, and the referee decides the restart and gives the signal. Goal and no-goal decisions are one of the categories the VAR can review, within the limits of its protocol, which is described in our guide to how VAR works in the Premier League.

Inside the penalty area: the goal-area line, the wall on the goal line and the 9.15-metre exception

An indirect free kick awarded to the attacking team inside the opponents' penalty area is the oddest set piece in football. The ball can be ten metres from goal. Every defender can be in the way. And yet the kick is no more likely to produce a goal than a corner is, and often less.

Where the ball is placed

The general rule is that a free kick is taken from where the offence occurred. One exception covers the goal area. An indirect free kick to the attacking team for an offence inside the opponents' goal area is taken from the goal-area line that runs parallel to the goal line, at the point nearest to where the offence happened. The effect is that no indirect free kick is ever taken closer than 5.5 metres from the goal line. A goalkeeper who picks up a back-pass on his own six-yard line gives away a kick on that line. One who picks it up on the penalty spot gives away a kick on the penalty spot.

A free kick to the defending team inside its own goal area can be taken from anywhere in that area, which is why a goalkeeper often places it at the corner of the six-yard box and plays it like a goal kick.

Why defenders may stand closer than 9.15 metres

Law 13 requires opponents to be at least 9.15 metres from the ball until it is in play, "unless they are on their own goal line between the goalposts". The exception exists because an indirect free kick inside the area may be closer than 9.15 metres to the goal; without it, defenders would be required to retreat behind their own net. So they line up on the line, between the posts, shoulder to shoulder.

Normal distance for opponents9.15metres

Penalty mark from goal line11metres

Goal-area line from goal line5.5metres

Width of the goal7.32metres

Attackers from a defensive wall1metres

Fixed distances from Laws 1 and 13. A kick on the goal-area line is 5.5 metres from defenders standing on the goal line, closer than the 9.15 metres required everywhere else.

Show the numbers

Distances that shape an indirect free kick in the area

Item	Value
Normal distance for opponents	9.15metres
Penalty mark from goal line	11metres
Goal-area line from goal line	5.5metres
Width of the goal	7.32metres
Attackers from a defensive wall	1metres

How the kick is usually played

The taker almost never shoots. The standard routine is a short touch sideways to a team-mate, who strikes at goal as the wall charges off the line. Defenders may charge the moment the ball is in play, which is when it is kicked and clearly moves, so the first touch has to be small and the shot instant. A taker who rolls the ball a metre and watches his team-mate shoot into a wall that has advanced to four metres has done what most teams do. The routines that work tend to move the ball diagonally backwards, so that the shot comes from a slightly greater distance but past a wall that has committed itself.

Walls matter here in a way they do not elsewhere. A ten-man wall covering a 7.32-metre goal from 5.5 metres leaves almost no target, but it leaves the goalkeeper unsighted, and a shot through a gap at the near post beats more goalkeepers than any shot over the wall.

Dangerous play in detail: the high boot, the low header and the player on the ground

"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." That is the Law's definition, and two phrases in it carry the weight: "threatens injury", not causes it, and "including the player themself".

The offence is an indirect free kick only if there is no contact. The moment the high boot connects with a face, the offence is a careless, reckless or excessive-force kick or challenge, the free kick becomes direct, and inside the area it is a penalty.

The high boot

A forward stretches for a dropping ball at shoulder height with a defender's head a foot away. If the forward plays the ball and misses the head, the referee has to decide whether the action threatened injury. It usually did, and the defender, who pulled out of heading it, has been prevented from playing the ball for fear of being kicked. Indirect free kick. If the defender was three yards away and was never in danger, there is no offence. Scissor kicks and bicycle kicks are explicitly legal so long as they are not dangerous to an opponent.

The header at knee height

This is the counter-intuitive one. A player who stoops to head a ball at knee height, where an opponent is in the act of kicking it, is the one in danger, and the Laws allow the referee to penalise him for it. He has put himself in a position where the opponent could not play the ball without risking a kick to the head. Referees use it sparingly and the decision tends to bemuse the crowd, but the logic is the "including the player themself" clause doing exactly what it was written for.

Playing the ball while on the ground

A defender sliding in, then hooking at the ball while still sitting on the turf with an opponent standing over him, is the commonest dangerous-play situation at grassroots level. The player on the ground threatens no one; he threatens himself, and the opponent cannot reasonably kick the ball without kicking him. Free kick against the grounded player, indirect, from where it happened. Goalkeepers diving at feet are judged on the same principle, though a goalkeeper who has control of the ball with his hands is protected from being kicked and the danger runs the other way.

Dangerous play carries no card by default. A caution follows if it was reckless or stopped a promising attack, and a sending-off if it denied an obvious goal-scoring opportunity. The restart remains an indirect free kick even then.

Impeding: when shielding is legal, and when contact turns obstruction into a direct kick

Older readers will know this offence as obstruction, the name it carried in the Laws until the wording was modernised. The modern term is impeding the progress of an opponent, and it covers a player who moves into an opponent's path to block, slow down or force a change of direction when the ball is not within playing distance of either of them.

Each element of that definition matters.

"Moving into the opponent's path"

All players have a right to their position. Standing still in someone's way is not impeding. Being in the way and then stepping across to stay in the way is. The referee looks for movement into a path the opponent was trying to use, which is why a defender who simply holds his ground as a forward runs into him has done nothing wrong.

"When the ball is not within playing distance"

Shielding is legal. A full-back who sees the ball running towards the corner flag and stands between it and the winger, arms by his sides, while it trickles out for a goal kick, is shielding a ball that is within playing distance; he could reach it if he chose, so he may protect it with his body. The same full-back blocking the winger's run when the ball is twenty yards away and nowhere near either of them is impeding. Playing distance has no fixed figure. It depends on the height of the players, their reach and the speed of the ball, and referees judge it by eye.

Within playing distance, the shielding player can be fairly charged by an opponent, shoulder to shoulder. Holding the opponent off with the arms turns legal shielding into holding, which is direct.

The contact rule

Since the 2016-17 rewrite of the Laws, impeding an opponent with contact has been on the direct free kick list. That single change moved a great deal of what used to be called obstruction from the indirect column to the direct one, because in a real match a player who steps across a runner's path almost always makes some contact. A defender who blocks a striker's run into the six-yard box and the two collide has, in modern terms, impeded with contact. That is a penalty. The indirect free kick for impeding is now reserved for the rare block in which the players never touch.

Taking the kick: a stationary ball, 9.15 metres, the one-metre rule and the quick free kick

The procedure for taking an indirect free kick is the same as for a direct one. Both are governed by Law 13, and the restart works this way:

1. 1Ball placedThe ball is placed where the offence occurred and must be stationary, except for the goal-area exceptions.
2. 2Opponents retreatOpponents move at least 9.15 metres away, or onto their own goal line between the posts.
3. 3Wall and attackersWhen three or more defenders form a wall, attackers must stay at least one metre from it.
4. 4Ball in playThe ball is in play when it is kicked and clearly moves. It may be lifted with one or both feet.
5. 5Second touchFor an indirect kick, a goal counts only after the ball has touched another player.

The procedure shared by direct and indirect free kicks. Only the referee's raised arm and the need for a second touch distinguish the indirect kind.

The one-metre rule arrived in 2019. Before it, attackers would infiltrate a defensive wall and pull or push their way out of it as the kick was struck, opening a gap and creating a running battle that referees could not police. Now, if three or more defenders form a wall, every attacker must be at least one metre from it when the ball is kicked. An attacker inside that metre concedes an indirect free kick to the defending team. It was one of the more sensible law changes of the last decade, and it was written specifically for free kicks around the penalty area.

Free kicks to the defending team in their own area

A defending team's free kick from inside its own penalty area used to be retaken if the ball failed to leave the area. Since 2019 it has been in play as soon as it is kicked and clearly moves, the same change that allowed the short goal kick. Opponents must be outside the area and 9.15 metres away until it is in play.

The quick free kick

Referees do not have to set a wall, wait for a whistle or pace out 9.15 metres. A team can take its free kick at once. If it does, and an opponent who has not yet retreated 9.15 metres intercepts the ball, play continues; the kicking team chose to take the kick before the opponent had a chance to move. What the opponent may not do is deliberately stand over the ball or kick it away to stop the free kick being taken quickly. That is a caution for delaying the restart of play. A free kick taken quickly from an indirect award inside the area is rare, because the attacking team needs a second touch anyway and benefits from the referee's control. Most referees in England will ask a team whether it wants the full distance when the kick is in a shooting position, and once the referee has intervened, the kick waits for the whistle.

Feinting to take a free kick is allowed. It is part of football. What the Laws call unsporting is feinting to take a penalty once the run-up is complete, which is a different law.

The indirect free kick in English youth football: deliberate heading in the youngest age groups

The indirect free kick has found a new use on English junior pitches. Under rules the FA has phased in over several seasons from 2024-25, after pilots and IFAB approval, deliberate heading has been removed from matches in the youngest age groups. A player who deliberately heads the ball in one of those matches concedes an indirect free kick to the opposition from the place where the header happened. Which age groups are covered in a given season, and where the kick goes when the header happens inside the penalty area, are set by the FA's format rules rather than by Law 13.

The choice of restart is telling. Deliberate heading is not a foul against anyone and nobody is booked for it, so it belongs on the indirect side of the line with the other technical offences. Accidental contact between ball and head, a clearance that hits a player in the face, is not penalised; referees, who in this age group are often a parent with a whistle, are asked to judge whether the player chose to head it.

The background, the medical research that prompted the change and the IFAB approval it needed are covered in our guide to the heading ban in youth football. The formats by age, including the small pitches on which most of these matches are played, are in our guide to FA youth football rules.

Other youth modifications that touch indirect kicks

The FA's youth formats change the size of the pitch and of the penalty area, and the smallest formats use a retreat line, a line to which the defending team must drop back when the goalkeeper has the ball. Breaking the retreat line is dealt with as the format rules provide, not under Law 13, and the restarts differ from format to format. Offside does not apply in the smallest formats at all, so the commonest indirect free kick of the adult game does not exist for younger children. When the formats grow, the Laws take over, and the full indirect list comes with them.

The general lesson is that an FA youth match is played under the Laws of the Game with permitted modifications. The heading rule is one of very few modifications that creates a new indirect offence rather than adjusting an existing one.

Why an indirect free kick in the penalty area is now a rarity

Anyone who watched English football in the 1980s saw indirect free kicks inside the area far more often than anyone watches them now. In the professional game they have become an occasional oddity. Three separate changes to the Laws account for the decline, and none of them was aimed at indirect free kicks as such.

1. 11992-93Goalkeepers may no longer handle a team-mate's deliberate kick. At first this produced indirect kicks, then goalkeepers adapted.
2. 21997-98The restriction is extended to throw-ins. Goalkeepers learn quickly and the offence becomes rare.
3. 32016-17Impeding with contact moves to the direct list, so most box obstructions become penalties.
4. 42025-26The goalkeeper's holding offence becomes an eight-second limit punished by a corner rather than an indirect kick.

Law changes that each removed a common source of attacking indirect free kicks inside the penalty area. The dates are the seasons from which each applied in England.

Goalkeepers adapted to the back-pass law

The first Premier League season, 1992-93, was also the first season of the back-pass law, and for a while it produced a steady supply of indirect free kicks in the six-yard box. They stopped quickly. Goalkeepers learnt to kick, defenders learnt not to pass blind, and within a few seasons a goalkeeper picking up a back-pass became a mistake made mainly in grassroots and youth football. In the professional game it is now a rare lapse.

Contact offences became penalties

The 2016-17 rewrite moved impeding with contact to the direct list. Under the old wording, a defender who obstructed a forward in the area without a clear foul often conceded an indirect free kick. Now that same block, if there is contact, is a penalty, and a block with no contact at all is unusual in a crowded area. Much of what an older referee would have given as obstruction a modern one gives as a penalty, or as nothing.

The six-second rule went

The last regular source, the goalkeeper holding the ball too long, was turned into a corner kick offence in 2025-26. That was a deliberate decision by the Board to replace a sanction referees would not use with one they would.

What remains in the area is dangerous play without contact, the occasional second touch at a restart, and the rare back-pass. The set piece still turns up in the Premier League now and then, usually after a goalkeeper error, and when it does it looks so strange that the broadcast replays it for its own sake. It was once routine. The Laws have not abolished it, but by turning its main causes into either penalties or corners they have made the indirect free kick in the box what it probably always should have been: a punishment for a technical mistake, not a regular scoring chance.

For the place this restart occupies among the seventeen Laws as a whole, our summary of the 17 Laws of football is the starting point, and the rest of our football coverage is gathered on the football hub.