As we mentioned before, the most grueling part of hitting the field during a soccer game is the fact that you are never going to have the opportunity to rest. As long as the ball is in play you are going to need to be active at any given point in time, helping your teammates to move the ball into your goal while at the same time keeping it away from the other team. In most other sports you would have the opportunity to rest after one of the teams scored as they retake their position on the playing field. Although you will do this while playing soccer as well, the break you are going to be able to get is going to be brief enough that you are going to think it never even happened by the time you are once again moving down the field listening to your muscles scream at you in protest.

Fortunately, if you have a couple of weeks at your disposal you can quickly build up your endurance so that keeping up with the constant pace of the field does not leave you feeling like something vaguely resembling yesterday’s garbage. Since the foundation of the game is based upon your ability to run it is your running skills that you are going to need to focus on. The average soccer player runs five to six miles during the course of a game at an average speed of four to six miles per hour. (The average is approximately the same speed as would be exerted by a strong power walker; however, bear in mind that this is an average, not an exact number. You will not be running at a steady four mile per hour pace; rather, you will have moments of running full out interspersed with periods of movement at a mild lope.) In order for you to be able to keep up out on the field you are going to need to be capable of traveling five to six miles at a consistent pace to be fit enough to keep up with the stop and go traffic accompanying the ball.

Of course, that does not mean that you need to go out there right now and run six miles. If you are not used to the exercise that would very likely kill you! (Not literally, but you would be fairly sore the next day and it is not overdoing it on one day and then having to take the next five off to recover that is going to help you shine on the field). Instead, what you need to do is start slowly and progress until you are able to run the entire distance. The distance you should begin at depends upon how much time you have until the season starts (hopefully you have given yourself plenty of time) and what your current level of conditioning is. Two miles is generally a good starting point; almost everyone can run two miles at a mild pace.

If you do not believe that you can run two miles or the thought of running for such a long distance intimidates you try to break it up into smaller goals; for instance, you could decide that you are going to run for twenty continuous minutes at a steady pace. This will probably still take you approximately two miles, but since you will be concentrating on the clock rather than on the distance you have traveled it will not feel as far. The important thing when you are doing a timed jog is to remember that it doesn’t matter how fast you go just as long as you keep running. If you are moving in a baby jog that really isn’t getting you where you want to go any faster than a quick walk would it’s okay; the point is, your legs are still moving in a jog-like manner. It is much harder to get started again once you have quit running than it is to make your legs keep moving, so you will be doing yourself no favors by stopping to walk and catch your breath. If you find that you truly cannot run for twenty minutes try a smaller increment, such as ten minutes, and work your way back up.

After you are comfortable with your two miles and/or twenty minutes it is time to extend your distance a little farther. It should take you approximately two to three weeks to become accustomed to a particular distance; perhaps not so much so that you are able to travel it with very little effort but certainly enough that you can stretch it just a little bit farther. Try tacking on an extra mile or an extra ten minutes to your runs for two or three weeks, then another mile or ten minutes after that, and so on and so forth until you are able to run a full six miles or an hour consecutively.

Under the rules of soccer there are ten offenses for which the punishment is a direct free. This means that the fouled team can score directly from the kick that serves as punishment for the foul. If committed by a defender inside his own penalty area, this direct free kick becomes a penalty kick. These fouls all punish acts on the field that the sport considers to be unfair or unsafe.

Most acts are fouls only if committed carelessly, recklessly, or with excessive force.
Most acts on a soccer field are fouls only by degree. This is because most actions during the run of play are harmless in themselves, and become fouls only if done in an unfair manner. Players can bump into each other while running, or push past each while each is trying to avoid a collision. They may tussle over the ball, or leap to head a long pass and collide another player who is trying to do the same thing. They may kick at the ball and narrowly miss kicking their opponent’s shin. All of these actions are just part of soccer, where most bodily contact is quite incidental to the players’ attempts to win the ball and passes quite uneventfully during the course of the game.

At other times, though, a player may mistime a kick, misjudge a jump, or overestimate the body’s ability to follow whatever instructions are coming from the brain, and those actions will exceed the bounds of fair play. Nobody can distinguish between fair and foul contact from a cold narrative of course, but there are some aspects of each foul that referees use to determine the result in a particular case:

Kicking

Kicking the ball is something every player on a soccer field tries to do. Kicking an opponent, on the other hand, is a foul.

Sometimes, a player’s foot will come in contact with an opponent through an otherwise fair play. Contact may be superficial, or a players’s foot may strike an opponent as one or both are falling to the ground (which may be grounds for a different foul, but might not be “kicking”). On the other hand, kicks can be quite painful, often leading players to lose their tempers. Under the rules, a player who does not exercise due care to avoid kicking an opponent commits a foul. A referee who sees two players contesting for a ball on the ground will be paying careful attention to the likeliest point of contact, their feet. If the foot misses the ball and connects with the opponent—whether through a knock on the shins, or a stomp on the foot—it will be a foul.