Quote Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro View Post
In football "holding" is a major penalty. It happens all the time but the ref decides when to call it and when not too.

I don't see the urge for 100% adherence to the letter of the law in sports, no-calling is often better. It's silly to call someone for a handball when they were trying to hit it with their chest and it bounced off their shoulder instead.
The only time handball isn't called is when an opponent whacks it at you and you can't realistically get out of the way. If you deliberately handle it, it's a yellow. If you miscontrolled it and the ball touched your hands/arms, it's a free kick. If an opponent kicks it at you and you could realistically have been expected to get out of the way, it's a free kick. Hence the advent of defenders keeping their hands behind their back when pressing the shooter.

Also, as you've mentioned, handball is a direct (major) free kick, ie. it can be scored directly from the set piece, and if it occurs in their own penalty area, is a penalty. Re: your earlier question, the backpass rule applies to all passes made by feet where the defender was attempting to pass the ball to their own player, and if the goalkeeper subsequently touches the ball with their hands without anyone else having touched it, results in an indirect (minor) free kick. This means headed and chested backpasses are ok to handle, and skewed clearances that were meant to go into orbit, but end up in the keeper's hands, aren't called either.