Foosball Misconceptions, or what's allowed and what's not, is a two-part series of articles that aims to tackle common misconceptions and misused rules surrounding the sport. This is the second part of the series, the first one on this link you can reach.
If you haven't scored, you have to crawl under the table
Also pub rules, if you score zero goals in a game, you have to crawl under the table. This is actually a joke, no such rule. Many people think it's fun to crawl over opponents under the table on the dirt floor, but there's a lot of things on the floor of a nightclub, except cleanliness. So only climb someone you are in a relationship with that will not cause offence or anger, but the point is: climbing is not compulsory!
When you shoot a shit, you have to knock it down
Let's start with what we call "shit", or "sitt" in Hungarian. Any goal or pass, which happens to be successful, so the opponent is "lucky". This is what players do by knocking off or just touching the edge of the table and "apologising for their luck". Here again, the point is there is no such rule, nothing obliges you to do so.
Shits should not be tapped while playing for two reasons: on the one hand, you are distracting yourself, and on the other hand, you are telling the opponent that, for example, your oblique shot was not intentional. Tactically, it is better if the opponent starts to think about this, because it distracts him and makes it easier to break down his defence. If you really want to apologize to your opponent, you can still do it after the match, but it is not mandatory.
source: Foosball Strategy
But in reality there is no such thing as shit, everyone wants to do everything right, but it doesn't always work out, especially when an opponent is scraping by with thousands on the other side. As I heard from a sports psychologist: when you get a goal like that, you always have to look at what happened before. Players typically try to vent their own frustration by citing external circumstances, luck, something like that, which they have no control over, thereby absolving themselves of their own mistakes. Moreover, these luck factors even out over the longer term - hundreds or thousands of balls - between players. So focus on your own game, not the opponent's, that's where you can do the most to win.
If the ball goes out, the person who started the set starts
It's a misconception that if the ball bounces on an open table, it's the player who started the game. In fact, the ball can be brought into play from the backline by the opponent who deliberately kicked the ball, so a deliberate attacking action has taken place, but whether the ball bounced off your midfield or from elsewhere on the table is irrelevant. Logically, if you kick the ball from your backline, the opponent will come, also from his backline. There is also a special event, the classic doubles - classis double - where the ball is put into play always the area between the backline and the goalkeeper - unless overridden by another rule - instead of a middle start, the detailed rules for this are given in ITSF page you will find.
There is one exception, here too the 2ball - 2ball - tournament interferes. If one team has already scored a goal, but the other ball is still in play, then whoever kicks the ball, the team who scored the goal and is behind comes next.
Foosball misconceptions: apply the rules that "belong to the table"
Basically, what matters is that whether the standardised rules adopted by the ITSF are applied to the table, or whether the table - e.g. P4P or Jupiter - rules. In all cases this is will be decided by the organisers, but as a rule of thumb: ITSF rules override the rules for the table. So, if an official ITSF tournament is held on P4P - also known as Ullrich-Sport - tables, the ITSF rules will apply, unless the organisers say otherwise.
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The same is true if the tournament is multitable, i.e. you have to play on multiple table types, such as ITSF Belgrade competition. In such cases, uniform rules are applied to all tables, so that, for example, different rules do not have to be applied to each set. The easiest way to do this is to ask the organisers, but the tournament rules also contain information on this.
However, it is true that the P4P competitions basically the P4P rules apply, e.g. there is a golden goal in the deciding set or any number of times you can touch the wall with the ball. Much steeper on Jupiter is the rule that allows you to to be able to pass from midfield to forward from a position, as seen in the Frederic Collignon vs Rocco Raven match below.
Foosball misconceptions: a goal scored over the pitch is invalid
By default, such shots are physically impossible on closed tables. On an open table, however, it is possible, for example aerial or the eclipse - named after a club in Budapest at the time, the former can be done with a bouncing ball kicked onto the back wall, the latter with a single dummy using a ball bounced onto the side wall. It was probably the 1981 film "Long Shot" that made them popular, but you hardly ever see them at competitions.
In the official ITSF rules there is a rule called "Illegal Aerial", i.e. no goal is allowed which is scored "directly over the pitch" - direct overfly - into the goal. It is not direct if the ball accidentally bounces up and into the goal from above the pitch, nor if the opponent's shot is deliberate but he kicks the ball onto the side wall and it bounces into the goal from there. I have seen this once in my life, in a P4P tournament in Bonn, where the ball touched the edge of the side wall and bounced into the goal from there, and it was considered a legal goal.
Or the main rule is that you cannot deliberately throw the ball directly into the goal from above the pitch.
Foosball misconceptions: if I accidentally pass from behind from a ball in the middle, it is not a foul
It is a relatively rare case and is based on the following rule, marked in the rulebook as 23.1: "A ball that is caught or stopped must touch at least two midfielders before passing to the own forward."
As this rule only applies to passing from midfield, the following has been added to point 23.3:"Clause 23.1 shall apply equally to a pass from a two-pole or goalpost to a five-pole of the same team."
I would like to illustrate the problem with a practical example, which has happened in reality: the opponent holds the ball in a pin position, holding it down - so it is not moving - and wants to shoot a wall shot, but misses, so the ball gets stuck between his own midfield and the wall, without touching any of the opponent's lines. This is thus considered a pass, even if it was not an intentional act because the player intended it to be a shot, i.e. irregular, since the rules do not specify such a clause.
The theme should has two more sub-varians, which is worth further discussion. One is when a stationary ball, such as a shot, is intercepted by your own teammate's midfield line. This is the same foul pass as covered in rule 23.1, except that if the opponent hits the ball with his own line, the process is broken and the move is not a pass, and it is not a foul to catch it. The other variant is when the above occurs in midfield, i.e. a player passes a stationary ball to a forward. In this case, even if the opponent gets in the way, the move is still a foul pass. This is worth knowing because it the rule change was published in 2022 - 4.10 - passing -, this was not the case in the past, but the same rule applied to the two rows.
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