This is the main page for the SOCCER-COACH-L Laws of The Game (LOTG) Project: a collective effort to produce a set of frequently asked questions about the laws of soccer together with answers.
The project was conceived, organized and coordinated by Chris Mohr. It was a collaborative effort by interested members of the SOCCER-COACH-L mailing list to make the Laws of the Game more accessible to coaches and to answer some frequently asked questions about the Laws. Many of the questions are ones, or resemble ones, that have been asked by members of the mailing list at one time or another. From November 1997 to January 1998, members of the LOTG Project drafted various sections of this FAQ. The drafts were circulated to all members, criticized and redrafted before being posted here.
If after you consult this FAQ you wish to reproduce any part of it, please read the notes on copyright and reproduction below. If you'd like to suggest a question for inclusion in the FAQ on one of the Laws, by all means send it to any member of the project team.
The material connected with the LOTG Project consists of the following parts:
Licensed referees who wander in may find this FAQ interesting and helpful for your own purposes, and you are more than welcome to stop in. Keep in mind, though, that this is written primarily as a practical field guide to the LOTG for coaches, and not as a referee certification review course. We don't promise that you'll find it told in here quite the way you learned it in referee school; instead, we've been watching y'all in the field and what you actually do, as much as what the letter of the LOTG says you should do, even while our descriptions of the rules remain faithful to the latter. So please don't write to us to say that your interpretation of Law such-and-such is different from anything found here -- we already know that referees interpret (and must interpret) the Laws in light of their own conception of the Spirit of the Game. That's why we added this disclaimer:
Disclaimer: the material contained in these pages is provided for the information of soccer (association football) coaches and other interested persons everywhere. Much of the information involves interpretation of the Laws of the Game, and there is no guarantee that the opinions given herein will invariably apply: one of the joys and frustrations of soccer is precisely that referees have a great deal of latitude in applying many of the provisions of the Laws.
Note on copyright: This work is a creation of the SOCCER-COACH-L LOTG collective, which is a pseudonym for a joint project among several individuals for explaining the laws of the game of soccer, for the benefit of all who love this wonderful game.
The copyright in this jointly created work is jointly held by the following individuals, who created and wrote this work:
Note on reproduction: all copyrighted material contained in these pages (including the thumbnail sketches of the Laws, the commentaries on or discussions of the Laws, and the Questions and Answers) may be copied and distributed subject to the following restrictions:
The FAQ is available for downloading in its entirety or as separate parts, for those who would like to have a printed version.
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Updated 12 September 2001 by David Graham