As a relative newcomer to soccer, I am having trouble with the offsides rule. How is a linesman supposed to watch not only offensive player "A" who may or may not be offsides, but also another offensive player "B" who may be 50+ yards away, who may or may not pass the ball to offsides player "A"? If, as I suspect, this is often an impossible task, there are bound to be many incorrect calls made. Am I missing something here? How does the soccer world reconcile this?
In theory at least, the officials are quite experienced and skilled at what they do, but I think you are basically right, and the answer is "very carefully."
They look down the line at the positions of the offensive and defensive players, and listen for the boot striking ball. Same as a first base umpire, really.
Typically the Field Referee has two linesman to assist him. It is their job to watch for offside in their half of the field and it really isn't that hard - they have a very good vantage point of they stay roughly even with the last defender. Despite the very dubious lack of call on Earnie Stewart, linesman get it right an amazingly high amount. Sometimes what looked like during "live" play as being one way, turned out to be different as I was watching the slo-mo replays on TV... and it's not unusual where I am surprised by how good the linesman are. Besides, the offside call is to prevent "cherry picking" and it does that very well. In some cases, too well... the offside trap is a little boring in my opinion. It would be fun to see what would happen if they treated the offsides like they do in Hockey where once the ball moves in "on-sides" into the final 3rd of the field... "off-sides" goes away. This would prevent offensive players from camping around the goal but would elminate the boring "off-side trap"... hey, food for thought.
I heard about it, I saw the MLSnet.com vids on it, but they were inconclusive. Anyone have a vid w/ a better angle?
No, he has it right. He's referring to multiple (all) offside calls, so an 's' added would be correct.
Actually, the 's' that makes the noun plural is on the word 'calls.' This is like writing 'I have 5 blues shirts.' The word describing the noun, in this case, 'offside' does not need to be made plural to match the noun.
It is difficult to do correctly 100% of the time, and virtually impossible if the referee's assistant is poorly positioned. But, they get it right most of the time.
Well, I am conviniced you can put an 's' at the end of offside in some cases. How about, "There were many many offsides." --dropping the use of 'calls' altogether.