Question Number: 35851

Law 12 - Fouls and Misconduct 12/30/2024

RE: Adult

David Howard of WETHERBY, West Yorkshire United Kingdom asks...

1. Can a penalty be awarded when the offence does not take place within the penalty area?
2. Can a penalty be awarded when the ball is not in play? e.g. waiting to take a corner and the goalkeeper flattens the centre forward with a right hook!
3. Can a penalty be disallowed because of an offside?

Answer provided by Referee Joe McHugh

Hi David
Thanks for the questions

Let’s take 2 and 3 first as they are the easy ones

2. The ball has to be in play for a penalty or a free kick to be awarded. There can however still be misconduct while the ball is out of play so in your example the goalkeeper is sent off for violent conduct and the restart is still a corner kick as the ball was not in play. The goalkeeper is obviously replaced before play restarts with the team down to 10 players.

3. Yes a penalty can be disallowed due to offside as the offside offence happened first. A recent example was in the Leicester City v Man City game. There was what looked like a clear penalty on a Leicester player by the Man City goalkeeper on a one on one yet the attacker was deemed offside in the build up so the restart was an indirect free kick to Man City for offside.

On your first question a penalty kick cannot be awarded when an offence does not happen in the penalty area. The difficulty for referees can be determining where the actual offence took place. The line is part of the penalty area so an offence on the line is also inside the penalty area.

In addition a holding foul could start outside the penalty area and continue inside the area which results in a penalty kick.
On the other hand a trip or kick outside the area could result in the attacker falling inside the area which is not a penalty kick.

The following questions were asked as a follow up to the above question...

See Question: 35859