DOGSO + Offside

[JBeil]

A player in an offside position recieves the ball from a teammate, and a defending player tackles him in a reckless fashion, outside of the penalty area, denying an obvious goalscoring opportunity.

The referee shows a red card for DOGSO outside of the penalty area, when the assistant indicates the attacking player was offside. Is the correct procedure;

- to rescind the red and replace it with a yellow for a reckless tackle, since no goal-scoring opportunity existed?
- to restart with an indirect free-kick for the defending team?

 

[Gabriel]

Definitely an IFK. My initial thought is then no card at all because of the offside, but not too sure.

 

[ARF]

Depends on the circumstances - if the foul occurred before the attacker interfered, then it would be a caution and a direct free kick to the attacking team. If the foul occurred after the attacker has interfered, then defensive indirect free kick for the offside offence, and caution for the reckless tackle.

 

[wazztie16]

Definitely an IFK. My initial thought is then no card at all because of the offside, but not too sure.

There must still be a sanction for the reckless tackle. Swap reckless tackle for violent conduct, you'd still dismiss the player even though it's a defensive free kick, in law it's not different for reckless play or serious foul play.

 

[JamesL]

The clue in the OP is he received the ball, so assuming the ball was touched/played.

IFK restart for offside. Caution for reckless tackle.

It's also the easier option as trying to explain that it's not a red for DOGSO, because the player was offside would be an interesting event!!

 

[socal lurker]

The clue in the OP is he received the ball, so assuming the ball was touched/played.

even if he hasn’t touched the ball yet, it’s hard to imagine an attacker getting tackled if he isn’t challenging for the ball.

But totally agree with the outcome. OS + caution.

 

[GraemeS]

I struggle with the ideal that a player who is fouled in the process of trying to get to the ball hasn't "interfered" and therefore become offside at that moment?

 

[socal lurker]

struggle with the ideal that a player who is fouled in the process of trying to get to the ball hasn't "interfered" and therefore become offside at that moment?

Kinda what I just said, isn’t it? While it is absolutely possible to foul on OSP player before the player that player is interfering (easiest example, I suppose, would be a hold from behind away from the ball), I don’t think it is possible to tackle an OSP player without that player having been challenging an opponent for the ball first, as the tackle implies competing for the ball.

 

[GraemeS]

Kinda what I just said, isn’t it? While it is absolutely possible to foul on OSP player before the player that player is interfering (easiest example, I suppose, would be a hold from behind away from the ball), I don’t think it is possible to tackle an OSP player without that player having been challenging an opponent for the ball first, as the tackle implies competing for the ball.

I wasn't disagreeing with you?

 

[RustyRef]

I struggle with the ideal that a player who is fouled in the process of trying to get to the ball hasn't "interfered" and therefore become offside at that moment?

There was an example in the latest referees mic'd up show. A foul on an attacking player who was well offside at a set piece, the argument was that the foul happened well before the attacking player became involved in play and therefore a penalty was the correct decision. Granted this was interfering with an opponent rather than play, but it is the same principle.

 

[Russell Jones]

I struggle with the ideal that a player who is fouled in the process of trying to get to the ball hasn't "interfered" and therefore become offside at that moment?

Comes about because the LOTG definition of interference is a lot more specific and defined than some general notion of interference.
To give an easy to understand example ... two attacking players running towards the ball, the one from an Onside position clearly getting there first. Defender (foolishly) decides to trip the attacker who was running from an Offside position and is still 10m from the ball. Referee team can choose whether to give the foul or play advantage but 100% aren't giving offside

 

[Peter Grove]

I struggle with the ideal that a player who is fouled in the process of trying to get to the ball hasn't "interfered" and therefore become offside at that moment?

The law quite clearly says this can happen, though.

Law 11 states the following:

In situations where:
[...]
a player in an offside position is moving towards the ball with the intention of playing the ball and is fouled before playing or attempting to play the ball, or challenging an opponent for the ball, the foul is penalised as it has occurred before the offside offence

 

[GraemeS]

Oh of course, I'm not saying that's wrong. It's just conceptually really weird, isn't it?

 

[RustyRef]

Oh of course, I'm not saying that's wrong. It's just conceptually really weird, isn't it?

People think it is weird because they don't understand the concept that a player is only penalised once they play the ball or interfere with an opponent which prevents them from playing the ball. We know otherwise, so not really sure why it should seem weird to us as we know that the foul happens before any offside offence is committed.

 

[GraemeS]

I don't think it's that at all, I think as @Russell Jones suggests, it's again down to poor choice of wording/making up their own definitions from IFAB. "A player [...] is only penalised on becoming involved in active play by:" and then a list of actions.

Is that list of actions supposed to be an exhaustive list of what they count as being involved in active play? In which case, the concept of "involved in active play" is unnecessary, confusing and shouldn't be introduced. Replace it by "committing one of the following actions" or "becomes active by", remove the idea of involvement and the whole section makes more sense.

Although I'd argue you'd still have "why is being fouled while trying to reach the ball not in the list?" as an active question, the answer "well it's not on the list" is the start and end of the discussion. Instead, what we have is the concept of involvement that then doesn't include a particular obvious type of involvement, for no particular reason.

Or, is that supposed to be a non-exhaustive list of examples of what "being involved in active play" looks like? In which case, the overall heading makes more sense, but the framing of the list as "by:" is wrong. I'm fairly sure this isn't the intention, but it's a valid question raised by the fact that the headline is we are supposed to penalise "being involved in active play".

 

[socal lurker]

As much a as I harp on IFAB for being horrific at drafting, I don’t think this is ambiguous at all. “Being involved in active playl is defined by what follows. Sure that language could be dropped, but IFAB does like to keep language around and tweak rather than making wholesale changes. The biggest example has to be “gaining an advantage”—language that exists solely because of the history of Law 11 and bears only a slight resemblance to the definition. So I don’t agree there is ambiguity: the list is exhaustive. (With the arguable caveat as to whether the example below the bullets actually fits into the paradigm.)

On pursuing the ball, IFAB made a concerted effort to narrow when pursuit of a ball is enough to be active involvement to completc an OS offense. we can debate whether that box has been drawn too small, but it can’t be that a defender fouling an attacker who hasn’t yet met the criteria for interfering with an opponent by challenging for the ball suddenly has committed an offense because a defender fouls him.

To wind up, I think the concept here is quite simple: had the attacker reached the stage of interfering with an opponent as defined in Law 11 before the foul occurred? If so, it’s OS (just as it would be if there was no foul). If not, it’s a foul and a poor decision by the defender. In practice, I think the times there is going to be a foul instead of OS are few and far between, as most fouls occur as competing players get close to the ball. (And I still say that a tackle will always be OS—I don’t seem anyway to tackle someone who isn’t challenging for the ball-$it’s really built into the definition. Of a tackle.)

 

[GraemeS]

So why use the word involved when you then immediately have to define it as "similar to what the lay-person would think involved means, but slightly different in these specific ways"?

Someone who is chasing the ball and fouled in the process is clearly "involved in active play" in a way that any lay-person would define it, but is explicitly not "involved in active play" by the IFAB definition. And as I say, it would be so simple to remove that concept and simply state that "an opponent can become eligible to have committed an offside offence by taking any one of the following actions:"

An unnecessary penchant for re-using old language is a really poor excuse IMO. If the definition has moved on from "Involved", the wording should too.

 

[socal lurker]

An unnecessary penchant for re-using old language is a really poor excuse IMO. If the definition has moved on from "Involved", the wording should too.

I didn’t say it was a good excuse. But it’s a fact about IFAB. Gaining an advantage hasn’t meant anything close to what the words mean for decades. It’s still an artifact from way back when it was an offense to “seek to gain an advantage,” with the language tortured over years. Much of the magic book could use a good copy editor- IFAB consistently demonstrates that it is poor at writing things to be clear what they mean.

 

[Peter Grove]

I have sent suggestions to the IFAB on at least a couple of occasions, that they drop the phrases, "interfering with play by," and "gaining an advantage by," from wording of law 11. Doing so would not affect the meaning of the law in any way and would remove the confusion that these phrases still continue to cause with just about everybody involved with the game, except referees. (And even then, some refs still seem a little confused by it, as discussions on here occasionally demonstrate).

I've never received a reply.