Drop ball: when and how it works

Most restarts are obvious: a throw-in, a corner, a free kick. The drop ball is the one people struggle to place, because it only appears when the referee has stopped play and nobody has done anything wrong. It is also the restart that changed the most in recent years.

When a drop ball is used

A drop ball comes out when the referee has stopped play with the ball still on the field, but there is no foul to punish and no throw-in, corner, goal kick or free kick to give. The whistle went for something outside the run of play.

The usual reasons are a serious injury the referee wanted to stop for, outside interference such as a second ball or an animal coming onto the pitch, or the ball hitting the referee in a way that changed the game. There is no offence by either team, so there is no free kick. The restart has to be neutral, which is what the drop ball is for.

Under IFAB’s Law 8, the referee drops the ball instead of handing possession to either side by decree. This is the law that also covers kick-offs, so a drop ball sits alongside the kick-off as one of the two ways the referee personally restarts a stopped game.

How a drop ball works now

The current procedure is short and uncontested. The referee drops the ball for one player, and every other player from both teams has to be at least 4 metres (4.5 yards) away until the ball is in play. The ball is in play the instant it touches the ground.

Who the ball goes to depends on where play stopped. Law 8 splits it two ways:

• If the ball was outside the penalty area, the referee drops it for one player of the team that had, or would have, kept or won possession. If that cannot be worked out, it goes to one player of the team that last touched it.
• If the ball was inside the penalty area, the referee drops it for the defending team’s goalkeeper, in their own penalty area.

In practice the two teams sort it out informally. The player who receives the drop ball will usually knock it back to the opposition, because the side that last had the ball is the one being given it back. That courtesy is a convention, not a rule: the Laws decide who gets the ball, they do not require the receiver to return it.

The receiving player does not have to wait for a second signal. Once the referee has dropped the ball and it touches the ground, it is live.

What changed in 2019

Before the 2019/20 Laws of the Game, a drop ball was contested. The referee dropped the ball between one player from each team and they challenged for it as it landed. That version is gone.

IFAB replaced it because the old contested drop ball too often produced a “manufactured” restart. Sides would agree in advance to let one team win it back, or the drop would turn into an unnecessary confrontation as two players lunged at a bouncing ball. IFAB’s 2019/20 law changes switched to returning the ball to the team that last played it, so the restart reflects what was actually lost when the referee stopped play, rather than becoming a fresh 50-50.

This is also why you see the sporting manual return so often now. Because the ball is handed back to the team that last touched it, and the game is being restarted from a neutral stoppage rather than a foul, players treat it as an honesty restart and give the ball straight back to the other side. The Laws do not script that return, the possession rule just makes it the natural thing to do.

The ball hitting the referee

The referee is treated as part of the pitch. If the ball hits the referee, or an assistant, and play carries on, nothing happens. That was the rule for years, and it still holds most of the time.

The 2019/20 change added an exception. Under Law 9, the ball is out of play, and play restarts with a drop ball, when it hits a match official, stays on the field, and one of three things follows:

• a team starts a promising attack, or
• the ball goes directly into the goal, or
• the team in possession changes.

So a shot that deflects in off the referee does not count as a goal. A pass that ricochets off the official straight to the other team does not stand as a turnover. In each case play stops and the referee drops the ball for the side that would have kept or gained possession if the deflection had never happened, at the spot where the ball struck the official. If that is inside the penalty area, it goes to the defending goalkeeper.

You cannot score directly from a drop ball

A drop ball cannot go straight into the net. Law 8 requires it to be touched by at least two players before a goal can count.

If a drop ball enters a goal without touching at least two players, the restart is:

• a goal kick, if it went into the opponents’ goal, or
• a corner kick, if it went into the team’s own goal.

That mirrors the way you cannot score directly from a throw-in either, where a throw straight into the opponents’ goal becomes a goal kick and one into your own goal becomes a corner. The drop ball adds the “two players” wording because, unlike a throw, it can legitimately be played by more than one person before anyone shoots.

Two more edge cases sit in the same section. If the dropped ball touches a player before it touches the ground, or if it touches the ground and then leaves the field without any player touching it, the referee simply drops it again. The restart only stands once the ball has hit the ground with nobody having jumped in early.