What are the markings on a football pitch?
Football is the most popular sport, with about 3.5 billion fans worldwide and played by 250 million players in over 200 countries.
Usually, when we think about football, our attention is focused on players. We don’t give too much thought to the surface for the game. But if we think about it, the football pitch itself is a one of the most important parts of the game. Without the pitch and without the lines on the pitch there would be no game.
What do the football pitch markings mean?
The purpose of the markings on a football pitch is closely related to the rules of the game. The lines help players visualize the playing area. They also help the referees to distinguish between the different zones and help them judge if the ball is within the playing surface or out, what kind of actions to take in case of a foul, where the goalie can use their hands and many more.
Let’s move on to explaining what the markings on a football pitch mean.
- Boundary lines
Firstly, there are the boundary lines, which, as the name suggests, mark where the playing area starts and ends. These form a rectangular area for the football game with two longer boundary lines, called touch lines and two shorter lines, called goal lines. In the four corners marked by the intersection of the boundary lines, there are the corner flags. 1m radius from each corner flag post the corner arcs are drawn. The corner arcs are important for corner kicks, which happen when an offensive player put the game back in play after it was rolled over the goal lines by a player on the defense.
The halfway line splints the pitch in two halves, one for each of the teams. At the midpoint of the hallway line lies the centre mark, which has a circle around it with a radius of 9.15m.
- Goal area
At the centre of each goal line lie the goals, which consist of two goal posts, framed by a horizontal crossbar. When a ball crosses the goal line between the goal posts, a goal is scored, and a team is closer to winning the match. At 5.5m from the inside of each goalpost two lines are drawn at a right angle, joined by a line parallel with the goal line. The area formed this way is called the goal area.
- Penalty area
Around the goal area lie a bigger box, at 16.5m from the inside of each goalpost. This is the penalty area, which represents the only space where the defending goalkeeper is allowed to touch the ball with their hands. Outside this area, it would be considered a handball.
The penalty area is also the place where penalty kicks are awarded in case the defensive team commits a foul within its own penalty box. In case of a penalty kick a player will shoot from the penalty kick mark, which is made at 11m from the midpoint between the goal posts. From the penalty mark an arc of circle, called the D, with a radius of 9.15m, is marked outside the penalty area. During the kick, the rest of the players must wait outside the penalty arc, to ensure nobody except for the shooter and the goalie are too close to the ball.
How to mark a football pitch
Most of the clubs nowadays rely on technology to mark their football pitch. There is a field painting robot, called Turf Tank, that marks the pitches autonomously. The person that controls the robot uses a tablet to select the type of pitch and the correct dimensions, and the robot is ready to mark all by itself. The robotic football field painter saves clubs hundreds of manhours on line marking every year and gives grounds people more time spent improving the quality of their pitches in other areas.
Of course, there is also the more traditional manual process. And as you can imagine, with all the different lines and markings on a football pitch, the manual option is a laborious process. A turf manger measures the different areas and uses strings to determine their positions. They lay some strings on the ground to mark the locations, and then they start pushing a machine with a sprayer creating the lines along those strings. Apart from the time constraints, manual line marking comes with another disadvantage, the human error. We are not robots, so it is impossible to be spot-on with the markings every time.
In this context, it is understandable why more and more decide to let technology improve their productivity and use robots to mark their pitches.