Twellman Offside?

Anyone have a link to the video? I haven't seen the incident yet.

 

The thread title "Twellman offside" sounds redundant and repetitive.

 

I knew this thread had to be coming.

In this play, the ball was crossed in, headed by an attacker at an angle away from the goal, but then bounced off a defender towards the goal, at which point Twellman tapped the ball in the goal.

When I went back to look at it slow motion, I think he was on side. He was running forward with the cross, and looked to be even when the attacker headed the ball. He was in an offside position when the ball hit the defender, but that shouldn't matter.

It was very close, and I can see how the AR could have called it either way. I had to watch in several times in slow motion, and even then I can't be sure. The bouncing around sure doesn't make it any easier, and the AR may have thought it deflected off an attacker rather than a defender, as there were a bunch of bodies in the area.

 

In the video, I believe the AR is signalling a direction. Thus, he might have been calling a foul on the US. There was a collision in the box where two people went down.

 

The AR called a pushing foul, it wasn't offside.

 

Right, although to agree with Chris' earlier post, it was very close. The defender to watch on whether Twellman was in an offside position or not is the one who is contending with Oneywu for the ball coming directly from the free kick, on the other side of the six. From my video, it looked like Twellman was just barely on--very close--but the video has a less-than-perfect angle. Could have gone either way. The ball deflects off the Tico defender to Twellman, who continued his movement to the far post, but that doesn't matter for the call--the judgement on Twellman would have been his position when Oneywu heads it, and it is very, very close (so we don't call it, right??)

But, as noted here (and not by the stellar commentators on ESPN-2), the call seemed to be for a foul, not offside. I couldn't see the ref on my video when the restart was taken, so I don't know if his arm was up or not.

If it hadn't been a foul, it shows how tough offside calls are when there is a lot of movement and play in front of the net, with a lot of players involved. The rapid shifts of the ball and players from both sides mean that the AR has to be very quick and readjust very, very rapidly.