ABSTRACT
What could one say about a goal in association football scored with the hands? Since the Laws of the Game were first codified, it is very clear that ‘to deliberately touch the ball with one’s hands’, with the exception of the goalkeeper in the penalty area, is illegal. From a purely formal point of view, there is no doubt about ‘hand goals’: they do not (and must not) have a place in the practice of association football. Even more, considering that the prohibition on the use of the hands by all field players and also by goalkeepers outside their penalty areas is fundamental to association football’s identity, scoring a hand goal is, according to this sport’s economy of values, not only a deviation, but a sort of threat or pathology.
