You're reading: Football (or soccer) for dummies

Football is a sport played with the feet.

That’s right, sports fans – don’t expect any catching or throwing at Euro 2012.

Nor will you see any timeouts, video replays or mass player substitutions.

Football is a simple sport. Two teams of 11 players try to outscore each other by hitting the ball into the opposing team’s goal using any body part (usually the feet or head) apart from the arms or hands.

The clock runs continuously in two 45-minute halves separated by a 15-minute break. Coaches are allowed only three substitutions during a match, and aren’t limited to replacing a particular position on the football pitch.

The on-field referee is the game’s chief adjudicator. Two yellow cards automatically results in a red card. When minor fouls are committed, the game is briefly paused to award ball possession to the opposite side.

For more serious fouls, a player is issued a yellow warning card. Two yellows get a player ejected.

Flagrant fouls are immediate red cards and means automatic ejection.

Tackling is a precise art, without the aggression of American football.

The player has to try to connect with the ball. If he takes out the opponent or trips him, it’s a foul and the other team is awarded a free kick.

If the foul happens in the penalty box, the opponent is awarded a penalty kick from a spot 11 meters from the goal. If you touch the ball with your hand, that’s a foul, too.

Size doesn’t matter much in football. Europe’s best player for the second year running is Barcelona’s Argentinian forward Lionel Messi who stands at 1.69 meters.

Another great, fellow Argentinean Diego Maradona was only 1.65 meters, and perhaps the greatest footballer, Brazilian Pele was a modest 1.74 meters.

It takes skillful craftsmanship to dribble and pass a ball primarily with the feet, although the head and body are less frequently used to pass and score.

And since any or all the players can move around the field at will with the exception of the offside rule, the penalty area around the goal usually gets crowded making it difficult to score.

Probably the most complicated aspect of the game is the offside rule.

It’s only called when a team has the ball in play in the opponent’s side of the field.

Essentially, a player cannot be ahead of the last defender (apart from the goalkeeper) when the ball is played forward to him.

Like in hockey, the goalkeeper has special privileges.

While adhering to the same rules as any outfield player, he is allowed to handle the ball with his hands if he and the ball are both in his own penalty area, and if the ball wasn’t kicked to him by his own player and the ball wasn’t directly received from a throw-in.

When the ball goes out of bounds on the sidelines, the team who put it out of play loses possession.

A throw-in subsequently follows.

If the defending team puts the ball out of play on their own endline, the opposing team is awarded a corner kick on the side where the ball went out of bounds.

But if the opposing team hits the ball out of play on the endline, then the defending goalkeeper puts it into play.

The winners of each of the four groups at Euro 2012 will qualify to play in the quarterfinals against the four second-place teams from other groups.

When the Euro 2012 enters the knockout stage during the quarterfinals, an extra 15-minute period will follow a tied or scoreless regulation match.

Should the score remain unchanged after this phase, an additional 15-minute period is added.

If the score is still drawn or scoreless, a penalty shootout will follow. The team to score the most out of five shots wins.

If the result is still tied, a goal-for-goal sudden death shootout follows until an unmatched goal is scored by one of the teams.

Kyiv Post staff writer Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected]