Being a referee is hard. Really hard. Soccer is fast. There are a lot of players. The field is big. And the referee is tasked not only with the safety of every player on the field, but to see, recognize, and enforce every rule of the game. And a lot of our referees are kids. Now imagine being a teenaged referee and knowing every call you make is probably going to mean someone – usually a parent, a coach, maybe both – is going to yell at you. Like I said, hard.

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It’s even harder when spectators, players, even coaches don’t necessarily understand the rules as well as they could. And that’s where this new feature comes in. With each article, we’ll dig in – briefly – to an important rule or feature of the game that is all too often, and all too easily, misunderstood.