News: Monday, April 29, 2013

FYI - Gardner

 

Thank you, I almost clicked

 

Now, I hate Gardner's pieces as much as anyone, but to be fair to him this time around, I actually agreed with him on this article. There is simply too much defense bias when it comes to soccer. So here we have a sport where goals matter big time, and we do whatever it takes to prevent them!

The way I see it come up most often is in the implementation of the offside rule. I think refs are supposed to defer to the offense when they are unsure if a player was offside, but it certainly seems they defer to the defense. I suppose it is better in their mind to take away a goal that seriously tips the balance in favor of the status quo.

I would go so far as to implement the so-called "daylight" rule in offside (that it is only offside if the offense player is so far in front of the defender as to see "daylight" between them). In other words, any overlap in body parts would not be offside. I mean, in every other instance in soccer, you have to be completely over the line (especially in goal scoring chances), but it seems that you only have to be touching the offside line to be ruled offside instead of all the way over. (Plus, it has never been clear to me exactly where the offside line is anyway - is it at the body part of the defender closest to the goal - is it at his torso? The daylight rule would seem to remove a lot of doubt and ambiguity to offside.)

 

It's any part of the body that can legally play the ball: head, torso, leg, foot - yes. Hand, arm - no.

 

The daylight rule makes too much sense. That's why it won't happen soon;
If FIFA wants more exciting games and less controversy then that's the change we need.

 

More exciting, yes. There wouldn't be any less controversy though. People will still argue that "there was daylight" or "you couldn't see daylight" when the ball is played, just as they do now--only the offside line is moved a few feet closer to the goal.

 

The pure nature of offside certainly means there will be 'bang-bang' calls no matter where you set the line. The question is whether a different sort of philosophy will prevail. Right now, drawing an opponent offside by running the 'wrong direction' (away from where the play is headed) is relatively easy. A daylight rule would make it relatively harder, which might cause a rethink either of whether teams use that tactic in the first place, or how fans look at it. It might become more like the really close penalty call on a desperation lunge in the box, ie 'it's 50/50, but you shouldn't have gone in for that challenge.' Or the really close handball call where 'you shouldn't have left the hand out there.' FIFA has instructed refs to give attackers the benefit of the doubt for offside, but they haven't really gotten it.

Of course, the other argument for a daylight rule is more general-it was supposed to be designed to prevent 'lollygagging' around the goal, but the rule as interpreted now is an order of magnitude more stringent than that, and very few of the guys who are called for it were doing anything even close to lollygagging.