What is an Indirect Free Kick in Soccer

Series Summary

Soccer is the most popular sport in the world. Known as football in most countries of the world, soccer is a team sport consisting of two teams of eleven players each, one of which must be the goalie. The game has been played for centuries and can be dated back as far as 2nd and 3rd century B.C. China. In typical game play, players attempt to create goalscoring opportunities through individual control of the ball, such as by dribbling, passing the ball to a team-mate, and by taking shots at the goal, which is guarded by the opposing goalkeeper.

In this free video, our expert Ron Weisberg will teach you how to take an indirect free kick. He'll teach you what an indirect free kick is, how to shoot from an indirect free kick, how to ricochet the ball off people, and he'll show you some set plays for indirect free kicks with examples.

Video Transcript

"Now what I want to talk about is an indirect kick. Now what makes a kick indirect is the foul committed is not a personal foul which is like pushing or kicking or something physical. It's something like if the defender kicks it back to the goalie and he picks it up, that's illegal. He can't pick it up if the defender kicks it back to him. So what would happen is from wherever the defender kicks it, there's an indirect free kick. So what that means is the kicker cannot just kick the ball into the goal. Somebody else, either on his team or the other team has to touch the ball before it enters into the goal. Now the way you know if it's direct or indirect is the referee will signal. This is direct...this is indirect."