Football’s pitch markings are taken for granted, as you’d expect considering they’ve been this way for 86 years in the world’s most popular sport.
But those markings are, in various ways, quite strange and often largely unnecessary. Here’s why…
The centre spot
If there was no centre spot, where would a football game start from?
Well, it doesn’t actually matter. If there’s a tip-off, as in basketball — with both sides fighting for the ball from the outset — then it makes sense to stage this in strictly neutral territory. But there is no particular reason why a match which starts with one team in possession of the ball actually needs to start in the centre. They could begin from their penalty area, or anywhere in their own territory, and the game would be entirely unaffected.
In fact, it might make things more interesting if the game started with a goal kick. It would bring an added interest to the toss, certainly — if you win it, do you elect to have the ball and play out from the back, or ask the opposition to begin, and inflict an early high press?
The centre circle
This is used to demarcate 10 yards away from the kick-off, of course. But if the centre spot isn’t truly required, neither is this.
Corner arcs
There are two relevant things about corner arcs. First, they’re a stingily small piece of the pitch you’re permitted to kick the ball from, particularly when there’s a corner flag in the way. (The concept of corner flags, incidentally, dates from the codification of football in mid-19th century England, and are the oldest-surviving concept to mark the boundaries of the pitch, aside from the goals).
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At tighter professional grounds, players have sometimes struggled to squeeze in a proper run-up. At amateur level, it’s not impossible that you’re hampered by fence or a slope. The eternally tedious debate about whether a ball is in the quadrant or not (the ball only has to overhang one of the lines) is partly because players are trying to create the best possible angle for a delivery, but also because they want a nice, clear run-up. If you were making the laws of the game tomorrow, you’d probably make the corner arcs two yards.
Second, there’s no arc to mark 10 yards away from the corner, as with the centre spot and penalty spot. There are generally two ‘notches’ next to touchline and goalline, each 10 yards away from the flag, so clearly there’s an acceptance that some guidance is needed. And it’s needed more than ever. Encroachment at corners wasn’t too much of a problem when the standard approach was whipping the ball into the box. For short corners, it becomes more of an issue.
Besides, players being back the requisite 10 yards is more vital at a corner than at a kick-off, both because it’s more likely to have a serious impact on the game, and because there are, on average, more corners than centres.
The D
This was the final addition to what has become the standard football pitch, originating in continental Europe and officially introduced in 1937. It is, of course, designed to keep other outfielders 10 yards from the ball at a penalty.
But the only impact of the ‘D’ is that it increases the chances of surely the worst type of goal in football — when the taker has an effort saved, but because he or she had a head-start over every other outfielder, they’re able to tuck home the rebound.
Yes, it makes sense for other players to be 10 yards back, because it’s in keeping with every other comparable situation. But if players aren’t allowed in the box anyway, they won’t be interfering with the penalty taker’s attempt to score. You could scrap the ‘D’ and penalty takers would still get a sufficient run-up. Do they really deserve such a head-start for any rebound?
The penalty spot
Recent years have seen a rise in a specific form of gamesmanship, where opponents attempt to scuff up the spot after their opponents have been awarded a penalty. At times, this has proved decisive; the taker has subsequently slipped, and missed. In 2015, Augsburg goalkeeper Marwin Hitz was guilty of doing this shortly before Cologne’s Anthony Modeste slipped and missed. Hitz subsequently apologised, and was later sent a bill of €123 for the damage to the turf.
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In those situations, is there any reason the penalty must be taken from that precise spot, rather than anywhere level or behind it? Probably not. Interestingly, back in the 19th century, this was precisely what was allowed: there was a 12-yard line that stretched all the way across the width of the pitch, and you could take the penalty from anywhere along that line. Maybe that was a waste of paint — not many players would elect to shoot from beside the touchline — but the concept does make sense.
It’s also worth considering that the original idea of a penalty was that it would provide a roughly 50-50 chance of scoring. These days, it’s more like 80-20. If you were sticking to the original purpose of a penalty, the spot (or line) would be brought back at least a couple of yards.
The six-yard box
A seemingly fundamental but largely superfluous pitch marking. Goalkeepers have to take goal kicks from within this area, although the game would not remotely be affected if they could take them from anywhere inside the larger penalty area.
The six-yard box has arguably the most curious history of all pitch markings, because original rules stated that a goalkeeper had to take a goal kick from within six yards of the nearest post (rather than simply six yards from the goal line). The result was something that looked more like… well, you can use your own imagination.
That lasted up until 1902, when a simple box was introduced.
The other purpose of the six-yard box is that indirect free-kicks, usually awarded after the goalkeeper has handled a back pass, are not allowed to be taken inside the six-yard box. They must be taken outside it, from the closest spot to the offence — although it’s extremely rare that this is relevant. For context, in last season’s Premier League, just two indirect free-kicks were awarded inside the penalty box all season, none of them for offences inside the six-yard box.
The halfway line
A sacrosanct part of football’s pitch markings, certainly, but it only became mandatory three decades after football was first codified, when it was decided that goalkeepers should only be able to handle the ball inside their own half, rather than anywhere on the pitch.
What is its main purpose today? To keep players in their own half at kick-off? Useful, OK. But really, the point of the halfway line is all about offside. You can’t be offside in your own half, so defences can’t push up and compress the play past that point.
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During the 1980s, when stiflingly aggressive offside lines were compressing the game into a narrow band in the middle of the pitch, affording little space for talented midfielders to shine, there was briefly a consideration that two additional lines should be introduced, roughly dividing the pitch into thirds, and that players couldn’t be offside unless they were in the final third of the pitch, rather than the opposition half.
That never materialised, in part because football is extremely conservative about pitch markings in general. Instead, tweaks were made about the definition of ‘interfering with play’, which meant the play became less squeezed. But if those lines had been introduced, the halfway line itself would have become even less useful.
The penalty box
Unquestionably the most important of all the pitch markings, introduced in 1891. The goalkeeper can only handle the ball inside this area (a change from 1912 — previously it had been anywhere inside their own half), and any offence in this area by the defending side results in a penalty kick. Both simple enough.
The curious thing, though, is that the penalty box is a box at all. It once extended across the entire width of the pitch, before being cut off to take up roughly two-thirds of it. Most similar sports — basketball, hockey, netball, handball — use an arc, rather than a box.
And parts of the penalty box, towards the corners, are miles from the goal. It’s largely illogical that an offence committed in that zone should result in the attacking side having a roughly 80 per cent chance of scoring a goal. Think, for example, of Moussa Sissoko’s unintentional handball a couple of minutes into the Champions League final of 2019.
If you were designing the penalty box tomorrow, you’d probably make it an arc, rather than a box. And, furthermore, rather than simply designing something geometrically neat, as in handball, you could actually use expected goals (xG) or expected threat (xT) data to judge precisely which offences deserve the penalty of, well, a penalty.
It’s not unreasonable to think that, since football is accustomed to two different boxes close to the goal, the six-yard box and the 18-yard box, it could actually reformat this into two different penalty boxes, with penalties taken from different distances according to the proximity of the offence to goal.
Data is used by clubs for team and player analysis, so why not by IFAB to govern the laws of the game? Some penalty offences deny a 0.99xG goalbound shot, some are almost irrelevant in terms of the possibility of a goal.
When all is said and done, should we rip up pitch markings and start again? Absolutely not. There is a simplicity to the pitch markings which have been in place for the best part of a century, a familiarity and a beauty few would want to scrap.
But it’s still worth considering that, amongst regular tweaks to the laws of the game, the shape of a football match is determined by those white lines — most designed in the 19th century, some of them unnecessary, and others just a little illogical.
(Top photo: iStock; design: Sam Richardson)
