This part of law would get you to the right answer, the GK not taking a kick would not be an eligible player.You are giving too much credit to IFAB for writing something a certain way to mean a certain thing. Here is what really happened. That sentence used to read "Any player thus excluded may not participate in kicks from the penalty mark" in the 2015/16 LOTG as per post 15. "Kicks from the penalty mark" used the be the name for entire process of penalty shoot-out. Then, in an attempt to simplify the wording from 2016/17 onwards, they changed references to the process to just "kicks", This wasn't too confusing given the name of the process. Then a couple of years ago they changed the name of the process to "penalty shoot-out", leaving references to the process as "kicks" stranded, but it still means the entire process.
Someone can email IFAB on this but I wont be surprised if they deny the stuff up, or better yet refer to the spirit of the law.![]()
During penalties (penalty shoot-out)
Only eligible players and match officials are permitted to remain on the field of play.



