Corner kick vs goal kick: who gets the restart

Both restarts start from the same event: the whole ball has gone over a goal line and nobody has scored. The referee then has one thing to decide, and it is not a judgement about fairness or fault. It is simply which team touched the ball last.

The last-touch rule

The restart after the ball goes out over a goal line is decided by one thing: which team touched it last. Everything else follows from that.

If a defender was the last to touch the ball before it went out, the attacking team gets a corner. This is set out in Law 17, the corner kick, which awards a corner when the whole of the ball passes over the goal line, on the ground or in the air, having last touched a player of the defending team, and no goal is scored.

If an attacker was the last to touch it, the defending team gets a goal kick. Law 16, the goal kick, is the mirror image: a goal kick is awarded when the whole of the ball passes over the goal line, on the ground or in the air, having last touched a player of the attacking team, and no goal is scored.

The two laws are written the same way on purpose. The only variable that changes the outcome is whose player put the last touch on it. A clearance that a defender slices behind their own byline is a corner. A cross that an attacker overhits straight out is a goal kick.

The whole ball over the whole line

Both restarts need the same thing first: the ball has to be fully out. The whole of the ball must pass over the whole of the goal line. A ball sitting on the line, or hanging half over it, is still in play, and referees will wave play on in exactly those moments.

This matters because a ball can look out from the stands or from a wide camera and still be in play. The rule is judged at the point where the ball meets the line: if any part of the ball is still touching any part of the line, it has not crossed. That is the same "wholly over the line" test used to judge whether a ball has crossed the goal line between the posts for a goal, which is why goal-line technology measures the whole ball against the whole line too.

Until the ball is fully over, there is no restart to award. Once it is fully over, the last touch decides which restart it is.

Deflections still count

The last touch is the last touch, whoever it came off and whether or not they meant it. A deflection is a touch.

The situation that catches people out is an attacker’s shot that deflects off a defender and goes behind. The shot was the attacker’s, but the last player to touch the ball was the defender it deflected off, so it is a corner. It does not matter that the defender did not mean to touch it or that the attacker created the whole move. Last touch, defender, ball out: corner.

It works the other way too. A defender’s clearance that cannons off an attacker and rolls behind the byline is a goal kick, because the attacker put the last touch on it. Referees do not judge intent here. They judge who touched it last.

The modern goal kick rule

Goal kicks changed in a way worth knowing, because the old picture is still in a lot of people’s heads.

Under the current Law 16, the ball is in play as soon as it is kicked and clearly moves. A team-mate can receive it anywhere, including inside the penalty area. Opponents have to stay outside the penalty area until the ball is in play, but the moment it is kicked and moves, the ball is live and can be pressed.

Before the 2019/20 Laws change, the ball was not in play until it had left the penalty area, and a team-mate could not touch it inside the area first. The change let goalkeepers and defenders take short goal kicks to a team-mate standing in the box, which is why you now see so many sides build possession from a stationary ball inside their own area rather than launching it long every time.

Why the restart decision settles corner markets

This same last-touch decision is what settles corner-count betting. A corner has to be awarded before it can be counted, and it is only awarded off a defender’s last touch.

Every corner in a total corners market starts life as this decision: ball wholly over the goal line, no goal, last touch off a defender. Nothing is counted until that happens and the corner is then taken, which is the settlement detail covered on how corners are settled. A goal kick, by contrast, counts for nothing in a corners market, because the last touch was an attacker’s and no corner was awarded.

So the same judgement a referee makes in a fraction of a second, defender or attacker, is what decides whether a corner ever enters the count. If you back a total corners line, you are betting on how often that defender-last sequence happens across the match. The nearest rule-set parallel, a ball going out over a touchline instead, is set out on throw-in rules, where the same last-touch logic hands the throw to the other team.