Probably the most contentious of all the 17 Laws of football is the second shortest - offside. The attempts of the International FA Board since 2005 to clarify the interpretations of its various clauses, have only seemed to confuse many players, managers, supporters and commentators even more. However, I think it fair to say that most referees are fully conversant with the interpretations, but there is, as many Reading Referees discovered recently, one part of the law that can still create great differences of opinion, even amongst referees.
Without doubt, there used to be too many offsides, with goals being disallowed when they should not have been, because the offside player was not involved in active play. In 2005 we were told that ‘interfering with play’, means the offside player actually touching or playing the ball. Assistant referees now try to ‘wait and see’ if the offside player touches the ball before flagging. It means sometimes they are accused of being late with the flag.
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Gaining an advantage,’ is quite clearly defined as an offside player touching the ball after it has rebounded to him from the goal post, cross bar or defender. The third reason for penalising a player in an offside position is ‘interfering with an opponent.’ This was interpreted as ‘preventing an opponent from being able to play the ball by clearly obstructing his line of vision’, which usually entails blocking the goalkeeper’s view, or, and here is the contentious part, ‘making a gesture or movement, which, in the opinion of the referee, deceives or distracts an opponent’.
The recent meeting of referees who officiate on the Reading League was shown a video clip from the FIFA Confederations Cup in South Africa this summer. The Confederations Cup takes place every four years in the Country where the World Cup will be held the following year.
In the USA v Italy game in this year’s tournament, an own goal by USA was controversially disallowed. A long through ball was played diagonally across the field to Marco Camoransi of Italy, who was in an offside position. He was 2 to 3 yards behind USA defender Jonathan Bornstein, who being aware of Camoransi behind him tried to intercept the pass. Unfortunately he diverted the ball past his goalkeeper, Tim Flowers of Everton. The question is, did Camoransi distract Bornstein?
The results of two small surveys carried out in different parts of the world, showed 11 referees agreed with the referee of the game, who awarded an indirect free kick for offside but 58 would have allowed the goal to stand. It also created, I understand, some disagreement at the Reading League referees meeting.
It reminded me of a rather similar incident at QPR a season or two ago. A defender was in the centre of the field, just inside his own penalty area, with an attacker out wide behind him in an offside position. The ball was crossed from the right and in trying to prevent the pass reaching the attacker, the defender stuck out his foot and the ball went into the goal. The difference here was that the goalkeeper, thinking that the ball would reach the offside attacker, came out of his goal to narrow the angle, only to be beaten by his own player’s boot.
The assistant referee who flagged for offside, was deducted ten marks by the assessor. The FA afterwards reinstated those marks, agreeing with his flag. When shown to FIFA however, they decreed that the FA and the assistant referee were wrong and the goal should have stood. It was therefore said that this is the correct interpretation and all other argument was derided. But is it? After all, it is not the assistant but the referee who made the decision and surely as the law says, it is ‘in the opinion of the referee’ whether distraction occurred
Dick Sawdon Smith
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