A&H

Nations League...offside

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es1

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I get why its on as the law is written...but that has to be off.

Football expects that to be off. The defender doesn't make a play for the ball if the offside player isn't there. This part of the law is a massive disadvantage to the defending team.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1447298761823334411

Disregard the actual tweet! Garcia clearly touches it whilst stretching for it
 
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Regardless of what football expects this is a great call going by lotg. Mbappe, no where near close enough to Garcia to be considered interfering. Garcia makes a deliberate play for the play imo of course
 
Not disagreeing in terms of the laws, you're right of course.

It would also help if var clarified why the goal was allowed instead of letting Joe public claim conspiracy.
 
onside.

its one we might struggle to sell a public park level but in this level, its not even up for debate.
 

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Much like the handball law its poorly written and over edited. For me handball should be "in the opinion of the referee the handball was deliberate" and leave it at that (or something similar). Same with offside. This deliberate save stuff is not what football wants or expects and leaves fans bewildered. Who wants that?

Leave the notion of interference to the opinion of the officials without extra wording which just confuses matters. Less is more
 
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Ben448844 said:
Much like the handball law its poorly written and over edited. For me handball should be "in the opinion of the referee the handball was deliberate" and leave it at that (or something similar). Same with offside. This deliberate save stuff is not what football wants or expects and leaves fans bewildered. Who wants that?

Leave the notion of interference to the opinion of the officials without extra wording which just confuses matters. Less is more
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Spot on. Football is a game played in shades if grey. No law can be written to make it black and white which is what they want but will never achieve
 
Ben448844 said:
Much like the handball law its poorly written and over edited. For me handball should be "in the opinion of the referee the handball was deliberate" and leave it at that (or something similar). Same with offside. This deliberate save stuff is not what football wants or expects and leaves fans bewildered. Who wants that?

Leave the notion of interference to the opinion of the officials without extra wording which just confuses matters. Less is more
Click to expand...

The problem is, we HAD Laws that left handball as essentially "if in the opinion of the referee it was deliberate" and Football (ie coaches and commentators) screamed that it was unfair and needed rewriting. Whenever people say that football wants something, they really mean that THEY want it.

And as for the original offside problem: look, however the offside Law is framed it will be unfair on someone, attack or defence. I have seen back in the 70s and 80s (I am old) offside heavily slanted in favour of defenders. Goal after goal chalked off. Offside given if a player 20 yards away from the ball was in an offside position. The Law is now much fairer, but occasionally something like this crops up. Well I would rather have a goal given like this than have a dozen chalked off. Any attempt to write a Law to close this loophole would be ruthlessly exploited by teams to have goals disallowed. I know, because I have seen it happen before...
 
there has been a lot of effort to figure our where the line is on what kind of “play” by a defender should cleanse OS. A few years ago in the US, what was taught was that a play by a defender to to cleanse offside required the defender to “possess and control“ the ball. That could be a co trolled touch somewhere, but it excluded the stretch to stop a ball that only deflected it. IMHO, that is a better standard to play with than he current standard that penalizes a defender for making the attempt. I guess IFAB just likes that it results in more goals, or perhaps if the Americans were teaching it, then it just must be wrong….
 
Dan56 said:
The problem is, we HAD Laws that left handball as essentially "if in the opinion of the referee it was deliberate" and Football (ie coaches and commentators) screamed that it was unfair and needed rewriting. Whenever people say that football wants something, they really mean that THEY want it.

And as for the original offside problem: look, however the offside Law is framed it will be unfair on someone, attack or defence. I have seen back in the 70s and 80s (I am old) offside heavily slanted in favour of defenders. Goal after goal chalked off. Offside given if a player 20 yards away from the ball was in an offside position. The Law is now much fairer, but occasionally something like this crops up. Well I would rather have a goal given like this than have a dozen chalked off. Any attempt to write a Law to close this loophole would be ruthlessly exploited by teams to have goals disallowed. I know, because I have seen it happen before...
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The original offside law was changed because it ruled out alot of goals needlessly. Now we have the word "interfering", so that problem is gone. The "deliberate save" etc part of the offside law is confusing for all and should be removed.

Yes I want it changes but I don't think many disagree. A player was offside when a ball was played through to him but because a defender tried to stop it (what else is he supposed to do? Leave it and hope the attacker is offside?) he is now deemed onside? It gets us into a world of semantics and whataboutery.
 
socal lurker said:
there has been a lot of effort to figure our where the line is on what kind of “play” by a defender should cleanse OS. A few years ago in the US, what was taught was that a play by a defender to to cleanse offside required the defender to “possess and control“ the ball. That could be a co trolled touch somewhere, but it excluded the stretch to stop a ball that only deflected it. IMHO, that is a better standard to play with than he current standard that penalizes a defender for making the attempt. I guess IFAB just likes that it results in more goals, or perhaps if the Americans were teaching it, then it just must be wrong….
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Agreed. I totally understand and agree with @Dan56 's point as well, but this seems like a relatively straightforward tweak.
 
Dan56 said:
The problem is, we HAD Laws that left handball as essentially "if in the opinion of the referee it was deliberate" and Football (ie coaches and commentators) screamed that it was unfair and needed rewriting. Whenever people say that football wants something, they really mean that THEY want it.
Click to expand...

Often the claims are in the face of one decision with no thought to the 100s of other decisions/non-decisions it affects.
 
It's a commonly misunderstood law in my experience.
Especially since being a level 4 and working with NARs a lot. OSP are often flagged when loitering behind a defender because the AR believes they are interfering. The thought being the defender only plays the ball because of the player in OSP.
It would need more than a tweak to fix this because there are situations where this could be OS but there are loads of situations where this shouldn't be as well.
 
JamesL said:
It's a commonly misunderstood law in my experience.
Especially since being a level 4 and working with NARs a lot. OSP are often flagged when loitering behind a defender because the AR believes they are interfering. The thought being the defender only plays the ball because of the player in OSP.
It would need more than a tweak to fix this because there are situations where this could be OS but there are loads of situations where this shouldn't be as well.
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our monthly coaching this month was on exactly this kind of offside onside call, and some of the clips, the official answers were onside, and they were much tighter than the clip in question.
One similiar to the France clip got a 60 40 split in favour of onside, coaching revealed it to be onside, so there is certainly differing views.
We were however left in no doubt it was onside, drummed into us as you rightly say, we need extinguish the mindset of the defender only doing what he is due to the strikers position ( as unjust or difficult as that may be) and focus entirely on what factually happens, without our consideration as to the defenders actions.
 
One thing to keep in mind, however imperfect this is, both teams go into the game with the exact same understanding and it is applied equally to both teams. If a defender makes a deliberate attempt to play the ball and makes contact it resets offside for opponents regardless of if the defender knows or doesn't know of opponents being offside.

The current law may not be perfect on occasions but its application is very consistent. Unless its replacement can be applied as consistently or better, I don't think we should change it.
 
Anubis said:
our monthly coaching this month was on exactly this kind of offside onside call, and some of the clips, the official answers were onside, and they were much tighter than the clip in question.
One similiar to the France clip got a 60 40 split in favour of onside, coaching revealed it to be onside, so there is certainly differing views.
We were however left in no doubt it was onside, drummed into us as you rightly say, we need extinguish the mindset of the defender only doing what he is due to the strikers position ( as unjust or difficult as that may be) and focus entirely on what factually happens, without our consideration as to the defenders actions.
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That just reads as cart leading the horse though - it's a bad law, so we must go out of our way to teach our AR's bad and non-intuitive habits to compensate. Far simpler to adjust the definition of what kind of touch resets offside to make the whole process more intuitive to AR's and spectators alike.
 
GraemeS said:
That just reads as cart leading the horse though - it's a bad law, so we must go out of our way to teach our AR's bad and non-intuitive habits to compensate. Far simpler to adjust the definition of what kind of touch resets offside to make the whole process more intuitive to AR's and spectators alike.
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If my coaching says onside and explains why...thats that for me.
Nobody is asked to agree with whatever law or interpretation but we are asked to follow it
in the clip, surely that can only be a deliberate play, thus, we reset any offside position.
its certainly not a deflection or block.
imo, its clearly a deliberate play, and law 11 is clear on what that means re offside
if someone else does not class it as deliberate play, thats really their call.

idea of our coaching is should we be on line, and we encounter the France situation, given we have been told not to flag, we all dont flag, we have consistency
of course in reality, that wont happen,as, someone wont have seen the clips, or worse, they did but refuse to take the coaching onboard.
 
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I can't remember how old I was when I realised something being a law does not equal something being right, but it's definitely a concept I've been on board with for a while now.

I like to think that for this forum of engaged and intelligent referees, we can handle a discussion along the lines of "The law is X at the moment, but wouldn't it be simpler and more logical if the law was Y instead?". I'm not trying to force you to engage with that if you don't want to, but dogmatically going "This is the law and that's the end of it" suggests you may have slightly missed the point of what I'm saying.

In this specific case, you're saying "I have been to sessions and been taught the current law so I understand why spectators and other referees who haven't been on these courses are wrong". Which is great. But if the law change is simple enough (and in this case I think it would be), there's a lot of value in removing the need to go around teaching AR's this complex concept and instead, letting the intuitive interpretation simply be written into law.
 
GraemeS said:
I can't remember how old I was when I realised something being a law does not equal something being right, but it's definitely a concept I've been on board with for a while now.

I like to think that for this forum of engaged and intelligent referees, we can handle a discussion along the lines of "The law is X at the moment, but wouldn't it be simpler and more logical if the law was Y instead?". I'm not trying to force you to engage with that if you don't want to, but dogmatically going "This is the law and that's the end of it" suggests you may have slightly missed the point of what I'm saying.

In this specific case, you're saying "I have been to sessions and been taught the current law so I understand why spectators and other referees who haven't been on these courses are wrong". Which is great. But if the law change is simple enough (and in this case I think it would be), there's a lot of value in removing the need to go around teaching AR's this complex concept and instead, letting the intuitive interpretation simply be written into law.
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Problem is that it works right up until the point that something happens in a high profile match that causes controversy.

In all areas of the LOTG there are grey areas and there always will be. You could argue for getting rid of offside completely, or having an ice hockey type approach to it. Any and all "solutions" will have pros and cons and someone somewhere is going to feel aggrieved.
 
Justylove said:
Problem is that it works right up until the point that something happens in a high profile match that causes controversy.

In all areas of the LOTG there are grey areas and there always will be. You could argue for getting rid of offside completely, or having an ice hockey type approach to it. Any and all "solutions" will have pros and cons and someone somewhere is going to feel aggrieved.
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There's a million threads on here where people espouse their thoughts on how VAR "should" work. These kind of discussions have established precedent - Anubis' "Rules is Rules" stance is far more unusual on here than someone going "maybe this law change would work better?".

Genuinely quite confused to have this level of pushback against even the suggestion that we should have this discussion! But I obviously can't force anyone to engage on this so sure, let's just continue to implement a baffling quirk of the laws and not bother thinking about a better version.
 
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