Handball

Handball in football is the offence of a player deliberately touching the ball with a hand or arm, or gaining an advantage by touching it with an arm in an 'unnatural' position that makes the body bigger. It is one of the most contentious laws in the sport, because so much of it hinges on subjective judgement: whether the arm was in a natural position, whether the contact was deliberate, whether the distance was too short to react, and whether the ball came off the player's own body first. The law is written and periodically revised by the International Football Association Board, and the near-yearly rewrites are a big reason fans and even referees struggle to apply it consistently. The arrival of VAR made every borderline call reviewable in freeze-frame, which exposed how blurry the underlying rule is rather than clarifying it. You can read the current wording in the IFAB Laws of the Game. A deliberate handball that denies a goal or an obvious goalscoring opportunity can also draw a red card, not just a free kick or penalty.