What happens if you throw the ball into your own goal?

Can You Score an Own Goal from a Throw-In?

It’s a rare and peculiar scenario, but yes—players sometimes wonder what happens if they throw the ball straight into their own net. The short answer? You won’t get an own goal, but you will give the other team a corner kick.

Here’s the thing: a throw-in is designed to restart play after the ball has gone out of bounds. According to the Laws of the Game, a goal cannot be scored directly from a throw-in—either for your team or against it. If a player takes a throw-in and the ball goes straight into their own goal without touching another player, it doesn’t count. Instead, the referee awards a corner kick to the opposing team.

This rule exists to prevent deliberate trickery and maintain the flow of fair play. While it might seem like a minor technicality, it’s actually a crucial part of football’s structure. Imagine a defender panicking under pressure and flinging the ball backward—only to realize too late that it’s rolling toward their net. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your team’s luck), the rules step in to stop such mishaps from counting.

Still, these moments do happen. There are videos online of players, often under pressure or misjudging distance, tossing the ball toward their goal, only for the ref to blow the whistle and point to the corner arc. No goal, but definitely a moment of embarrassment.

So while you can’t be credited with an own goal from a throw-in, you can still hand the opposition a valuable attacking opportunity. And in football, that’s sometimes just as costly.