Probably the most contentious decision after the penalty - and only that because it’s usually not such a direct threat on goal.

What never fails to amaze us, the officials, is how players, fans and commentators, most of whom are in no position to judge, can be so quick to tell us we have got it wrong. Sometimes - in a small minority of cases - they are right because the assistant referee or referee does get it wrong. The problem is that making the decision really is more complicated than it appears.

Where was the attacker?

There are two elements to the officials’ judgment: one of fact, the other of opinion. Normally the factual bit of making a decision is the easy bit. Not with offside. To begin to get the decision right, the assistant referee must be perfectly at a right angle to the attacker in question at the moment the ball is kicked. In other words he has to be watching two different things. To compound his problem he may be running full pelt along the line to keep up with the attackers.

Interference and advantage

Once the assistant referee has decided the player is in an offside position i.e. beyond the second last defender at the moment the ball was kicked, then the opinion comes in. Was the player interfering with play, with an opponent or seeking to gain an advantage? This has been made somewhat easier since FIFA added the words ‘involved in active play’. No longer those arguments about the player on the far side of the field trying to get back onside. But there is still a matter of opinion about that ‘area of active play’ and it will always look different from different places in the ground.

Then there are the defenders who ‘move up’ to make attackers offside. Always a tactic of uncertain validity, there is no doubt it leads to discontinuous and usually boring play, as well as serious problems of fine judgment for the officials.

A possible solution

So what’s the answer? Electronic aids? Hard to see at the moment just how you could do it. Limit offside to the last third of the field? Experiments so far have not really produced a worthwhile answer. Personally I am attracted to a more radical solution.

The offside Law was devised in the last century to improve the game by preventing ‘goal-hanging’. The fear was that a player would stay upfield and gain an unfair advantage. While there might have been something in that argument when the game was played at a snail’s pace, the fitness and speed of today’s players have changed the game beyond comparison. So why not abolish offside altogether? It has been experimented with but not long enough for new tactics to develop.

The real snag about abolition is that there would be so much less for everyone to argue about after the game and blame on the officials ...

Brian Palmer

© B. Palmer 1998

Back To Contents