00:00The entire team lined up in front of the goal, desperate to stop the free kick that was about
00:04to be taken from a few metres away. To someone who only watches a little bit of football,
00:10this might look absurd. Typically, when a foul occurs inside the penalty box,
00:14it results in a penalty kick, not whatever this is. But this strange situation actually
00:20occurs more frequently than you might think. And it's all because of a few rules that were
00:24introduced way back in 1992, when old people were born. See, football had a bit of a problem at
00:30the time. Before 1992, goalkeepers could pick up deliberate passes back from their teammates with
00:36their hands. But the problem was teams had started to rely heavily on this technique to waste time.
00:41And as they did, it made the game quite stilted and slow. During a 1990 World Cup group stage match
00:47between the Republic of Ireland and Egypt, the Irish goalkeeper, Paki Bonner, held the ball in his
00:52hands for nearly six total minutes of game time by handling repeated back passes. So IFAB changed
00:59the rules of the game to disallow goalkeepers from picking up a ball when kicked back from their own
01:04teammates, in an effort to force keepers to keep the play moving and not stand around being boring
01:09ass ball fondlers. They also implemented a rule to stop keepers from dropping the ball at their own
01:14feet, dribbling a little and then picking the ball back up again with their hands, which is the exact
01:19foul that occurred, which resulted in this strange free kick. But if that's the case, why doesn't it
01:24just result in a penalty kick? Well, IFAB classifies fouls in two broad categories. Direct free kicks
01:30and penalties are awarded for physical, dangerous or cynical fouls, like a reckless slide tackle,
01:36a shirt pull or a deliberate hand ball by an outfield player to deny a goal. The back pass or
01:42a goalkeeper
01:42double touch, however, is a technical infraction. And so IFAB dictated that the punishment must be
01:48what's referred to as an indirect free kick. As the name suggests, you can't score directly from an
01:54indirect free kick. The ball must touch another player first. But the laws of the game and the
01:59dimensions of a football pitch create a uniquely hilarious problem when this foul occurs deep inside
02:05the penalty area. Because by law, defending players must stand 10 yards away from any free kick. But if
02:12a goalkeeper gives away an indirect free kick inside their own 6 yard box, the rules dictate that the
02:18kick must be taken from a 6 yard line. Which means defenders literally can't retreat 10 yards without
02:24standing behind the goal. So to solve this, the rules state that if a free kick is closer than 10
02:30yards to
02:30the goal, the defenders must retreat as far back as they can while remaining on the pitch. Which
02:36often results in the entire team standing squarely on the goal line all squished in between the goal
02:42posts. And thus creating one of the most chaotic moments that can possibly occur in a game of football.
