Does an own goal count against the player who scored it?
It counts for the opposing team on the scoreboard, but it is not credited to any player as a goal. It is recorded as an own goal against the player who put the ball in, and it does not appear in their scoring statistics.
The formal test is whether the ball would have gone in without the defender's touch. Competition rules and statisticians generally credit the attacker if their shot or header was on target and a defender merely deflected it. If the defender's touch was what sent the ball goalward — a miscued clearance, a deflection off a player moving away from goal, a pass back that beats the goalkeeper — it is recorded as an own goal.
That judgement is not always clear-cut, and different competitions have overturned decisions after review. The Premier League has a dubious goals panel that reassigns contested goals, sometimes weeks later.
A few specific rules are worth knowing.
A goal cannot be scored directly against your own team from a throw-in, a goal kick, a corner, a free kick or a kick-off. If the ball goes straight into your own net from any of those, the opposition is awarded a corner instead.
A goalkeeper cannot score an own goal by picking up a deliberate back-pass — that is an indirect free kick offence, not a goal.
Own goals in a penalty shootout are theoretically possible but not counted in the same way, since each kick is judged as scored or missed.
They are more common than most people assume: roughly one in every twenty to thirty goals in professional football is an own goal.