Let’s say Team A’s striker launches the ball towars the right-hand (as he’s facing it) side of the net. It’s a screamer and Team B’s goalkeeper makes a valiant lunch for it, gets a finger on it, alters its trajectory ever so slightly, and the ball still finds the back of the net.
Since it was going in anyway, is it a regular goal? Or is it an own goal for Team B since their keeper touched it?
For a keeper to have committed an own goal, it usually has to be blatant, such as him accidentally fumbling or kicking/nudging the ball into his own goal in a way that had little or nothing to do with the opposing team.
What you describe is not considered an own goal, it’s just the keeper not succeeding in stopping the shot. Otherwise, as you can imagine, keepers’ stat sheets would have something like “40 own goals per season.”
It’s only an own goal if the actual shot did not point originally at the goal but gets deflected by a player (no matter if fielder or goalie) into their own net.
My impression is that if the ball wasn’t headed into the goal, but redirected in by a defensive player, it’s an own goal.
If the shot was headed goal-ward and the defender deflects it but not by enough and it ends up in the net, that is not an own goal.
There are edge cases. For example, a shot is on target, but headed straight to the keeper. A defensive player sticks his leg out and the ball end up in the corner of the net.
Do the laws of football actually define an own hold? With prizes like the golden boots and betting results at stake, I’m sure it’s defined somewhere.
There are certainly some weird cases. For instance the goal at 1:40 here ends up officially recorded as an own goal, despite everyone in the stadium as it went in assuming it was scored directly off the free kick. Apparently it hit the top bar, was bouncing slightly out of the goal, off the goalie, and in.
Obviously not at all similar to the canonical ball-kicked-across-the-face-of-goal-and-a-defender-deflects-it-in, although I guess it makes sense in a technical sense.
If the original shot was on target then it gets awarded to the attacker, regardless of whether the defender’s touch was intentional. That’s my understanding anyway.