Soccer 13/14 Law 16 - The Goal Kick - Stationary or not?

I came across an interesting discussion the other day about goal kicks. The discussion was specifically about whether the ball needed to be stationary at a goal kick. It was presented such that the Laws of the Game did not state that the ball needed to be stationary at goal kicks, but did for all other kicked restarts.

With a bold statement like that, it almost necessitates looking things up in the Laws of the Game book.


So, sure enough, the various restarts are as described as follows:

Law 8 – The Start and Restart of Play. This Law covers the kick-off, which starts a match and a half, and is the restart after a goal has been scored. It states in the procedure section that:

Law 13 – Free Kicks. This covers direct and indirect free kicks (and thus, by extension, penalty kicks).

Law 14 – The Penalty Kick. An extension of Law 13, this has its own extra note.

Law 16 – The Goal Kick.

Law 17 – The Corner Kick.

The lack of the word "placed" or "stationary" in Law 16 is a bit amusing, but the wording "from any point" almost suggests a placement. Of course, it can still be argued that when the ball is kicked, moving or not, it is from a "point within the goal area."

Once the Interpretations are taken into play, things get a bit more precise, but the details are actually found in the Law 6 interpretations. The first deals with additional assistant referees, and is a new addition to the Laws of the Game interpretations (p. 84):

Of course, very few games, especially at the amateur level, use additional assistant referees, and the interpretations also cover the assistant referee's duties on goal kicks (p. 87):

The use of "placed" here brings things back in line with the other restarts.

Last May, Matthew Barrett, a London, England based referee under the English FA, posed the question directly to FIFA, and they responded to the following question:

Does the ball have to be stationary for a Goal Kick?

Yes, as for any kick the ball has to be stationary (e.g. free kick, kick-off, goal kick). If not it has to be repeated.

The USSF used to run an "Ask a Soccer Referee" feature, and in April 2007 also addressed this issue, stating that:

The specific statements in Laws 8 and 13 that the ball be stationary for the start and restart of play and free kicks also imply that the ball must be stationary for all kick restarts. 

Of course, the wording in Law 8 now only applies to kick-offs, and there is nothing anywhere within that obviously suggests that Law 13 applies to all other kick restarts.

As an interesting point of note, in the 1890 Laws of the Game, the following phrase appeared in Law 10, before it was amended to remove "and goal-kick" in the 1938 Laws of the Game:

The kick-off (except as provided by Law 2), corner-kick and goal-kick shall be free-kicks within the meaning of this Law.

This particular year, not only were the Laws of the Game heavily rewritten and moved into the order that we are familiar with today by Sir Stanley Rous, but the word "stationary" first appeared, in reference to free kicks.