The fatal back pass - Rules revisited

I can't do that?

Last weekend Bolton finally claimed some points at home with a 5-0 win over Stoke City. This owed a lot to Stoke keeper Begovic literally handing the game to them with his back pass which resulted in the first goal. The back pass rule refers to Law 12 under FIFA which states:

“A goalkeeper is not permitted to touch the ball with his hand inside his own penalty area in the following circumstances:

• if he handles the ball again after it has been released from his possession and has not touched any other player:– the goalkeeper is considered to be in control of the ball by touching it with any part of his hands or arms except if the ball rebounds accidentally from him, e.g. after he has made a save.– possession of the ball includes the goalkeeper deliberately parrying the ball.

• if he touches the ball with his hands after it has been deliberately kicked to him by a team-mate.

• if he touches the ball with his hands after he has received it directly from a throw-in taken by a team-mate.”

And although Begovic seemed flustered as to why he was being punished, his oblivion reminiscent of Arsenal keeper Fabianski’s gaffe against Porto last year, this rule is not as nascent as Begovic’s expression betrayed it to be. Interestingly, Fabianski also went on to commit another goalkeeping mistake in that game and stupidly handed the ball over to the attacking team before his defence could regroup – both errors were also committed by Begovic.

Defined twenty years ago and still surviving in its original form, the story of why this rule was introduced is an interesting one. The 1990 FIFA World Cup, now colloquially known as the most boring of all world cups had teams using their goalkeepers as a possession bank. Teams that had narrow leads would hand the ball all the way back to their goalies and wait for time to peter out. The goalies would then proceed to play a sadistic game of cat and mouse with the strikers – holding on to the ball, dropping it or tossing it briefly into the air and proceeding to handle it again before repeating the cycle innumerable times. FIFA decided that this clearly was not representative of their vision of the beautiful game and introduced the clauses mentioned above in Law 12. All of us – save Begovic perhaps – now dearly refer to these clauses as “the back pass rule”.