Question Number: 25227

Law 17 - Corner Kick 7/18/2011

RE: Travel Under 15

Jaewan Kim of YARDLEY, PA USA asks...

Under Law 17 Corner Kick, procedure, it states 'The ball must be placed inside the corner arc nearest to the point where the ball crossed the goal line'.
Any other parts of the pitch, 'inside' appears to be determined by the imaginary plane vertically extending from the lines. But it has been argued on this site that the ball has to be placed within the arc 'touching the boundary'. Which is correct? 'touching the boundary', or 'intersecting the vertical plane'?

Answer provided by Referee Dennis Wickham

Coach:

If any part of the ball is on or over any part of the corner arc line, the ball is appropriately placed for a corner kick.

Answer provided by Referee Gary Voshol

There were a couple closeup shots of corner kick placements in the WWC final in which the ball was placed so that it touched the grass outside the corner arc, but a portion of the ball was over the arc. This is legal.

Law 1 says, '... lines belong to the areas of which they are boundaries.'

Answer provided by Referee Joe McHugh

Hi Jaewan
Part of the ball must touch part of the corner arc line for it to be legal. Now if we look at the difference between 'touching the boundary' and 'intersecting the vertical plane' the difference is 2 inches. That is trifling

Answer provided by Referee Michelle Maloney

So, if the ball is placed inside the corner arc but not touching any lines, is it properly placed? Sure.

If some part of the ball is breaking some part of the plane of the line that is the entire corner arc (including the part with the touchline and the goal line), then the ball is correctly placed. Proceed with the kick (even if it just looks like the ball is over the line).

Causing the team to replace the ball unless they clearly have the whole ball well away from any part of the space contained by the corner arc is frowned on.

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

See Question: 25244