Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to list the indirect free kick offences under Law 12, including the goalkeeper-specific offences.

Lesson Explanation

An indirect free kick genuinely differs from the direct free kick (previous lesson) in one crucial respect: a goal cannot be scored directly from it — the ball must touch another player (of either team) before it can enter the goal, and if it enters the goal without doing so, the restart is instead a goal kick (if the attacking team’s ball) or a corner kick (if the defending team’s, an own-goal-style situation) — the mechanics of both restarts are covered in Part 3, Lessons 4-5.

Indirect free kick offences for any player include: playing in a dangerous manner; impeding an opponent’s progress without contact (a genuinely important contrast to Part 2, Lesson 1’s contact-based impeding, which is a direct free kick offence); preventing the goalkeeper from releasing the ball from their hands; and committing any other offence not previously mentioned for which play is stopped to caution or send off a player.

A genuinely important, distinct set of offences applies specifically to goalkeepers within their own penalty area: taking more than eight seconds to release the ball into play once in control (a 2025/26 Law change, tightened from the previous six-second guideline, and now enforced with a countdown signal and a corner kick awarded to the opposing team if exceeded); touching the ball again with their hands after releasing it, before it has touched another player; touching the ball with their hands after a deliberate kick from a teammate; and touching the ball with their hands directly from a throw-in from a teammate.

These goalkeeper-specific handling restrictions exist to prevent time-wasting and to keep the ball genuinely in open play rather than allowing indefinite goalkeeper possession, a principle worth connecting back to Part 1, Lesson 5’s discussion of the referee’s discretion over delays.

Practice Questions