Professional foul Professional foul In various sports, a professional foul is a deliberate act of foul play intended to bring about an advantage for the perpetrator's team. Professional fouls are usually committed to prevent an opponent from scoring. In association football, a professional foul involves a defender fouling an attacking player in order to prevent them from scoring, or a handball offence that denied an obvious goal-scoring opportunity. The resulting free kick or penalty may offer the attacking team a lower chance of scoring than the original playing position, and the defending player therefore has an incentive to tactically foul the attacking
A Sport and a Pastime of Autun in Burgundy. The book is generally regarded by critics as a modern classic. In "The New York Times Book Review", novelist and critic Reynolds Price wrote, "Of living novelists, none has produced a novel I admire more than "A Sport and a Pastime" ... it's as nearly perfect as any American fiction I know." The critic and biographer Adam Begley, in "The New York Times Magazine", called it "extraordinary ... The book feels utterly true." After Salter's death in 2015, the novel has continued to receive critical attention. In 2017, Sarah Hall (writing for "The Guardian") observed that: