But the ball went backwards ref!

Rofesleg said:
Exactly. So the direction of movement of the ball is irrelevant.
I'm not sure who I am disagreeing with and who I am agreeing with now :)

Although earlier you said the law literally says you can't be offside from a backwards pass. Which I think you now seem to agree is incorrect.
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I'm obviously just interpreting their comments differently, in my mind passing backwards to somebody means that they're by definition behind you.

If you kick the ball backwards and somebody who was ahead of you runs over and intercepts the ball, I wouldn't class that as a pass to them.

You're not going to pass backwards to somebody who's ahead of you, and if they're behind you then they can't be offside.

I appreciate your point about somebody coming from an offside position to collect a ball that had been kicked backwards, but that's not a pass to them in my mind, it's somebody collecting a loose ball.

It's all semantics anyway, I'm just passing the time whilst waiting for my flight.
 
breakthewallsdown said:
Argued with a lad at work today about this who couldn't understand why it was offside.

Amazes me that in 2022, grown men still don't understand how offside works.
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It doesn't help that they keep tweaking the law though. I think most grown men (and possibly some ladies, children and men who for whatever reason were not yet fully grown) understood the law perfectly well from 1920s until about 1990.
Although looking back at some vintage goals which were disallowed I think overall it is better now.
 
If you are level with penalty spot and cf is level with 6 yard box and you cross the ball backward to edge of penalty area and cf sprints back to intercept the ball then it is offside despite the ball going backwards because the cf was ahead of the ball when it was played. In the event of a 2 on 1 breakaway then attacking players would usually make sure they stayed behind the player with the ball or they would indeed be offside. Sounds like the pundits arguing this point don't seem to understand why VAR disallowed the goal. Ie, the Kane was ahead of the ball when it was played.
 
TeaCider said:
I'm obviously just interpreting their comments differently, in my mind passing backwards to somebody means that they're by definition behind you.

If you kick the ball backwards and somebody who was ahead of you runs over and intercepts the ball, I wouldn't class that as a pass to them.

You're not going to pass backwards to somebody who's ahead of you, and if they're behind you then they can't be offside.

I appreciate your point about somebody coming from an offside position to collect a ball that had been kicked backwards, but that's not a pass to them in my mind, it's somebody collecting a loose ball.

It's all semantics anyway, I'm just passing the time whilst waiting for my flight.
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I described a fairly common scenario earlier where a cross can be offside despite it going backwards.

A more realistic example is: a player stood with the keeper 3 yards from goal before a free kick from out wide inline with the 6 yards line that goes to the middle of the box 8 yards from goal. The player runs back to 8 yards out to challenge for the ball.

He was in an offside position when the cross was taken, the ball went backwards but he's not had to cover much ground.
 
If we have to tweak the law again in the close season (and I suspect that we will) I would suggest that offside was called only on foot position. This would give the benefit to the attacker as whichever direction you are moving in you are leaning in that direction, so a defender is moving out is leaning towards the halfway line and vice versa for the attacker. Ignore the position of the head of the head or any other part of the body. Simple?
 
Muttley said:
If we have to tweak the law again in the close season (and I suspect that we will) I would suggest that offside was called only on foot position. This would give the benefit to the attacker as whichever direction you are moving in you are leaning in that direction, so a defender is moving out is leaning towards the halfway line and vice versa for the attacker. Ignore the position of the head of the head or any other part of the body. Simple?
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So a player could have his head ahead of the ball and head it into the net and it would be allowed to stand? I'm not saying there would be riots but there would be riots :cool:
 
Muttley said:
If we have to tweak the law again in the close season (and I suspect that we will) I would suggest that offside was called only on foot position. This would give the benefit to the attacker as whichever direction you are moving in you are leaning in that direction, so a defender is moving out is leaning towards the halfway line and vice versa for the attacker. Ignore the position of the head of the head or any other part of the body. Simple?
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No. Not simple. That could allow you to score a clearly offside goal with your head.

There isn't much wrong with the current offside laws. People don't like marginal calls but there will always be marginal calls whether you move the margin or not.

As said before, technology will improve so these decisions are made by AI in real time and then this debate will be moot.
 
Nano said:
That could allow you to score a clearly offside goal with your head.
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No, it wouldn't be an offside goal because the scorer wasn't offside. 🤷‍♂️

Nano said:
As said before, technology will improve so these decisions are made by AI in real time and then this debate will be moot.
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Your faith in AI is, I fear, misplaced. (At least anytime soon)
 
Muttley said:
No, it wouldn't be an offside goal because the scorer wasn't offside. 🤷‍♂️


Your faith in AI is, I fear, misplaced. (At least anytime soon)
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I'd trust Artificial Intelligence ahead of the standard of refereeing we currently have.
 
This happens in football manager all the time because the match engine is not a true representation of football. One of its quirks is that a ball will be crossed backwards or sideways and a striker standing in an offside position will run backwards past the defenders and head the ball.
 
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