Rules
The MISL game was the standard North American version of indoor soccer. It was different from the FIFA-sanctioned futsal.
Each MISL game consisted of four 15-minute quarters. There were breaks between the first two and the last two quarters. There was also a 15-minute halftime. Ties resulted in consecutive 15-minute sudden death overtimes.
An MISL field was roughly the size of an ice hockey rink, measuring 200 feet by 80 feet. Goals measured 14 feet by 8 feet and are set into the boards. Players were allowed to bounce the ball off the dasher boards. Play stopped if the ball leaves the field of play.
During an MISL game, each team was allowed to have 6 players on the field at a time. One player was the goalkeeper who handled the ball while in the penalty arc. The other players were generally divided as two defenders, one midfielder, and two forwards. Substitution was unlimited and may happen "on the fly" during play.
Fouls and misconducts were generally the same as outdoor soccer with a few changes. First, all kicks were direct, with no whistle to restart play, which usually resulted in a "quick start". Also, the MISL utilized blue cards in addition to the traditional yellow and red cards of outdoor soccer.
Blue cards were for fouls that earn possible two minute power plays. Yellow cards were given for dissent, resulting in a 5 minute penalty but the offending team did not play short.
All red cards in the MISL resulted in a two minute power play. Red cards were awarded for violent conduct or accumulation of cards (3 blues or 2 yellows).
Originally, the MISL had a multiple point scoring system where goals were worth 1, 2, or 3 points depending upon the distance that they were scored or game situation. The former WISL teams objected to this. After the 2003 Championship, the league began using a traditional one-point-per-goal rule because of a controversial goal scored during the deciding game. However, the league went back to multipoint scoring in 2006 with 2- and 3-point goals.
Read more about this topic: Major Indoor Soccer League All-Star Game
Famous quotes containing the word rules:
“When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs ... I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb’s bleat.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practise politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)
“Children can’t make their own rules and no child is happy without them. The great need of the young is for authority that protects them against the consequences of their own primitive passions and their lack of experience, that provides with guides for everyday behavior and that builds some solid ground they can stand on for the future.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)