You prepare to receive a back pass in front of your goal, then you hear someone shouting: "Leave it", and in parts of a second in which your brain is working at full speed, you decide to actually leave it because you think that no one will dare to deceive you in this cheap way, then you are surprised by the opponent's attacker celebrating after I made him a target!

The happy surprise is that this is not legal. Sometimes we forget that FIFA's motto is "Fair Game", and deception is not fair in anything of course. The only problem with applying this rule is that it is difficult to prove, but in most cases, the judgment depends on the strangeness of the shot to infer deception.

In this series I will talk - exclusively - about similar footage; The shots where it becomes clear to us that we do not know the rules of the game, or rather we do not know all of them, including some of the professionals who take it as a job!

The big explosion

Legally, if the ball exploded on its way to the goal, or if something violated its roundness, sphericality, dimensions, or initial design criteria, the goal is not counted.

At first glance, the rule seems very intuitive, but often, the referee does not notice the matter, which is what happened in an unidentified Champions League match, where the ball exploded on its way to score a goal against Schalke, Germany, and despite discovering its explosion, the referee did not cancel the goal.

Once again, the incident was repeated in Switzerland - France match during the Euro 2016 finals, when Griezmann pounced on a weak pass backwards, and dribbled his opponent towards the goal before Behrami returned to cover, and then the ball exploded between his feet as a result of great pressure and rush and was replaced directly.

This is what makes the Brazilian striker Hulk's shot the strangest of all, as the ball exploded with just a shot from his powerful left foot during training for Zenit St. Petersburg, Russia, and the explosion was the most epic and powerful of all the ball explosions that we know.

Goals from indirect set pieces are prohibited

Almost everyone knows that the opponent cannot score a goal in your own net from a direct throw-in, but did you know that you cannot score a goal in your own net in the same way?

A throw-in, by its legal nature, is an indirect throw, and therefore it is treated as an indirect free kick whether it is in your favour or in favour of your opponent. If the ball goes in, it will be counted as a corner for the opponent.

Of course, the word “direct” here means that no one has touched the ball before it entered the goal. This rectification is the most important of all, simply because if Stuttgart goalkeeper Ron-Robert Zieler had known it, he would have been able to avoid the biggest embarrassment the Bundesliga witnessed in the 2018-2019 season when he was involved in tying his shoe during a throw-in for his team near the goal, and he only noticed it too late.

After a failed attempt to tame the ball, it entered the goal, and it would not have been counted had he not touched it! Fortunately for Zieler, Stuttgart won that game in the end.

Return to the keeper, on conditions

Returning the ball to the goalkeeper's hands with your head, chest, or any part of your body except for your hands and feet is completely legal, but on a specific condition, or rather not so specific!

In the 2016-2017 season, during the Nantes and Paris Saint-Germain match, Verratti received a pass from his goalkeeper, Salvatore Sirigu, and although he was not under any significant pressure, he decided to lie on the ground to return it to him with his head, and at that time, the referee awarded an indirect free kick to the home team and warned Verratti with a yellow card!

At first, the referee almost overlooked the shot, especially since Sirigu did not actually touch the ball with his hands, but after what seemed like a quick conversation with the flag referees on his own headset, he changed his mind. This is what happened to Ivan Perišić, the former Inter winger, in a match in the same season against Roma, when he raised the ball inside his penalty area so that he could pass it with his head to his goalkeeper Handanović, and at that time the referee decided to count it as a violation.

The rule here is that the back pass to the goalkeeper with the head or chest could be considered a violation if it was not spontaneous within the course of the game, meaning that Verratti and Pericic deliberately changed the position of the ball to return to the hands of the goalkeeper, which is considered illegal!

Conclusion

These are some of the strangest rules in football, some may be unaware of them. We'll go through the rest in the next post.