The Offside law. Again!

Perhaps this disagreement amounts to a fundamental disagreement in how each 'side' views the offside law, but it doesn't look that way to me.

It is interesting to me that I cannot recall any threads prior to the past couple months in which posters were arguing what they are now. All of a sudden, now that FIFA has explained more clearly the notion that the player must touch the ball to be considered offside in certain situations, people are jumping on the bandwagon and defending this position as the right way to implement and enforce offside. Where have you been all this time, folks?

 

ok. i'll play. bluedevils is morally correct. grizz is legally correct.
if i had my way - dance with the devil on this one.

 

It's too bad this wasn't in MLS, so USSF could throw the refs under the bus. Clearly Cisse took his offside position on purpose.

 

Given the current guidance from FIFA, I sure hope USSF would say a no-call in that situation was the correct decision. If they wouldn't, then I would really be confused. It sure seemed like a textbook example of the sort of thing that FIFA wants to see allowed, not punished as offside.

 

I'd have to look for the memo from last year, but I think USSF actually did come out and say that this notion that a player has to touch the ball to be considered offside is not the correct way to interpret this. I think their interpretation was more along the lines of what Englishref has been saying in this thread.

 

And here it is from the 2005 USSF memo:

"New International FA Board Decision 2
The definitions of elements of involvement in active play are as follows:
• Interfering with play means playing or touching the ball passed or touched by ateammate.

• Interfering with an opponent means preventing an opponent from playing or
being able to play the ball by clearly obstructing the opponent’s line of vision ormovements or making a gesture or movement which, in the opinion of the
referee, deceives or distracts an opponent.

• Gaining an advantage by being in that position means playing a ball that
rebounds to him off a goal post or the crossbar having been in an offside position or playing a ball that rebounds to him off an opponent having been in an offside position.

Reason: These definitions have been tried out over two seasons and modified following the approval of the original interpretation by the IFAB business meeting in September. This IFAB decision gives the appropriate recognition to the Laws of the Game booklet.

USSF Advice to Referees: These definitions first appeared in print in Questions and Answers on the Laws of the Game (2004) and have been extensively discussed. They clarify but do not change the accepted approach to offside and the specific issue of involvement in active play. Referees are reminded that the reference to “playing or touching the ball” does not mean that an offside infraction cannot be called until an attacker in an offside position actually touches the ball."

I guess the double negative there isn't the best expression, but they seem to be saying playing the ball is not equal to touching the ball.

 

I'm posting tongue-in-cheek re: the free kick offside issue from several days ago.

Though I would tend to agree with you, their reasoning behind that memo leads me to believe I'd be hard-pressed to assume anything where USSF is concerned. Actually, if them saying offside should be called would confuse you, that's as good of a reason as any...

 

Watched the highlight show with my DVR on slo-mo, and I didn't see Cisse affect any Rover. The goalscorer, Fowler, beat his man within a moment of his initial header into the box, because Fowler was running toward goal and the D was running out. In fact, that was the story of the whole play: the Pool attackers were running toward goal while the Rovers defenders were running away, so they got behind the D.

Cisse's actions were spontaneous. But you can see how this play is ripe for abuse, a la how Bolton's tricky freekick from a few years back, when two players lined up 10 yards offside but way out of play to distract the keeper, turned into the New York Red Bulls' play from the opening MLS week, where two attackers were yards offside by also in the middle of the play. IMO, the FA should issue a statement about exactly why that play was legal, but further explain how rare such a confluence of circumstances would be, to try to prevent teams from gaming the rules.

 

In those cases, the defenders would be running toward the offside player. IMO, no Rover player reacted in any way to Cisse. Every Rover player would have reacted exactly the same if he hadn't been there in terms of where they ran to. The difference would have been they would have run without their arms waving.

I would just like to add something I wrote in the Rovers YA pbp thread.

I don't need to remind y'all what the purpose of the offside rule is. It is NOT to bail out the defense when the attack gets behind it. It is NOT to make it hard to score. It's to open up whole field, vertically. It's to prevent teams from loading up on 6'6" guys and lobbing the ball into the box, trying to clear it, and then hammering it back the other way.

Even as a Rover fan, in this specific case, the defense got beat by Fowler's flick header, which got the other Pool player behind the defense. Simple cross, simple finish. Again, I ran it several times in slo-mo, watching different players, and I didn't see a single Rover react to Cisse except by waving for the AR to pop the flag. They just got beat.

 

This scenario is not the best one to argue my opinion on this issue. But I don't think the argument is lost simply because the defenders didn't run after or toward Cisse. As soon as they saw the ball headed his way, they knew he was offside and they saw him stick his foot out as if to play it. At that point, if I was defending and being of sound mind, I wouldn't have run after him either. I would have either stopped because he was clearly offside, or if I wasn't sure I would have tracked back into the 6-yard box to defend the cross. Or if I was nearer to him, I should have headed toward him to defend. But things happened pretty quick, and the ball ended up running past him and the other player ran onto it. So there quickly became no reason to run toward Cisse.

The current law and majority opinion seems to be that the defenders, if they want to be safe, must run toward this offside-positioned attacker because they cannot presume he will be deemed offside. It isn't enough that the ball is headed right for him and he is making physical movements or actions to suggest he is playing or trying to play or will try to play the ball. I find this disappointing and troubling.

Would the goal have occurred anyway, if Cisse hadn't been there? Maybe. But I don't think FIFA even wants that as a consideration, and that sucks.

 

No question about whether Richards was genuinely interfering with play? Assuming he touches the ball -- and is therefore offside by the letter of the law -- might this not qualify as a "gotcha" call?

 

No. If he touched the ball before it crossed the line then the offside can't be ignored.

Would you want a ref to ignore an offside attacker (let's say by two steps) if he knows that the defender would have never caught up to him even if the attacker wasn't offside? After all, in this case the offside had no impact on the result.

 

Actually it has been discussed here. It's mind boggling that anyone could NOT consider that 'affecting the play.'

It doesn't matter if he intended to affect the play. As soon as he lifts his leg up, defenders and the keeper adjust to get to him. Hence, he is affecting the play whether he touches the ball or not. Offside, no question about it.

 

I think u guys need to take into pespective of the referees too before insisting that it's offside or it's not offside. Right now they're pretty much divided on the issue too.

Read about it here.
http://www.officialsports.co.uk/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=000298;p=1

 

Now that I've seen it, I believe it was a correct non-call. The offside player (Cisse) intentionally pulled his leg back, the only effect on any defender was they stopped to put their hands up and stopped chasing, trying to "help" the refs. Nobody was close enough to Cisse to be effected, it was to far out for the keeper to be effected, he didn't touch the ball and he put his own hands up after he pulled back his foot.

I say good non-call.

 

Technically, this is correct, but in the recent discussion of a keeper who carried the ball too far on a punt, the general consensus was that it should've been ignored because it didn't alter the play. In that case, the ball was handled outside the box, but it could be ignored. Isn't that a double standard?

I'd say this example is different because the offside player *does* affect the play. In the real situation, Richards had no effect at all.

 

i dont think it waz offside in the liverpool vs blackburn because cisse was not active in the move that led to the goal

 

If only an offside attacker can reach the ball, the flag goes up immediately. If there is a greater chance of the defense clearing you can hold the flag until it is clear they will not. Otherwise, if there is a legal attacker with a chance to play the ball the flag needs to stay down until the offside player makes the touch.

This, however, does not excuse the offside attacker from involving himself in play through other means.

That being said, in my opinion Cisse did not distract or deceive the opponent. I believe the defense was committed at that point and did not alter their shape. I also believe they would have pulled off their marks, asking for offside, whether Cisse moved or not simply because of his position.

In my mind, these types of scenarios are what FIFA had in mind in releasing the interpretation. It provides for "dummy" offside players to trick defenses as a tactic, and one that has been used successfully for years in the United States. It promotes more creative attacking soccer, and defenses will simply have to adjust.

I will condition my opinion here though in that you must take these incidents case by case. In another very similar situation I might easily decide that the motions of the offside attacker were indeed responsible for deceiving or distracting the defense. You have to evaluate each scenario from its own merits - there will never be a clear cut answer for all.

 

Very well said. The Cisse play is squarely in the grey area of judgement, and shouldn't be used (as some posters are) to draw generalized conclusions about the offside interpretation. There are clear cases, and there are close calls. This one, IMHO, is a close call, but I think the call was correct. But as Statesman says here, it wouldn't take much to turn a very similar situation into an offside call. That doesn't mean the LOTG is badly written (although it is in places, but that's a different issue), or the refs are dopes, etc. etc. It means that sometimes there are very close judgement calls to make, and the refs have to do that in a split second using their experience and the guidance they've been given.

The LOTG and guidance cannot possibly anticipate every situation that will come up in a game (although they do cover a remarkable number of them), and refs have to use their judgement. The alternative is an endless stream of ever-narrower interpretations with teams trying to exploit each variation in the rules, further re-interpretations, and eventually video replay and all the slow game horrors associated with American football, where most of the elapsed time seems to be arguing about whether something happened, and then revisiting it seventy-five times. A perfect approach for a nation of lawyers, but not what we want for the real football...

 

I agree. If the offside offender causes the defense to change their defensive tactics, then it should be flagged.

That being said, standing there with your arm in the air is NOT a defensive tactic.

The defenders can not assume that a player is offside and simply watch. They must play to the whistle - not the flag and not the arm of their team-mate.

If a defender had tried to play the ball and Cisse got in the way, offside. But the defenders didn't go after the ball, they raised their arms, and that's what cost them. If they had played to the whistle, there is a good chance that it would have been called offside as Cisse may have gotten in the way of one of those defenders. But you can't be in the way if your opponent isn't moving.

 

Finally a reply to my question posted a few days ago.