Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to determine when the ball is in and out of play under Law 9, and explain how match outcomes are determined under Law 10.

Lesson Explanation

Law 9 (Ball In and Out of Play) establishes a genuinely simple, binary rule: the ball is out of play whenever it has wholly crossed the goal line or touchline, whether on the ground or in the air, or when play has been stopped by the referee. It is in play at all other times, including if it rebounds from a goalpost, crossbar, corner flagpost, or an official positioned on the field, or if it touches an outside agent that is then removed by the officials without stopping play unless the ball entered the goal.

A genuinely important, precise detail: “wholly crossed” means the entire ball must be beyond the line, not just touching it — a ball resting exactly on the touchline is still in play, a distinction that matters enormously for close offside and out-of-play calls and connects directly to goal-line technology’s role, previewed in Part 1, Lesson 4 and covered further alongside VAR in Part 5, Lesson 5.

Law 10 (Determining the Outcome of a Match) establishes that a goal is scored when the whole ball passes over the goal line, between the goalposts and under the crossbar, provided no offence has been committed by the team scoring. Match outcomes may be a win, a loss, or a draw, or — where competition rules require a winner — decided by extra time and/or kicks from the penalty mark, a genuinely distinct procedure from the in-game penalty kick covered in Part 3, Lesson 2, since kicks from the penalty mark occur after the match has otherwise ended in a draw.

A genuinely important connecting principle worth flagging here, since it recurs throughout this course: like Law 9’s ball in/out determination, whether a goal has been scored is a matter of fact under Law 5 (Part 1, Lesson 3) — the referee’s determination, aided where available by goal-line technology or VAR, is final once the restart has taken place.

Practice Questions