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'FIFA Meddling Is Not Helping The Game'
NORMALLY, my weekly column is a mixture of drunken side-swipes, half-baked speculation and theories that even Fox Mulder would reject as too far-fetched.
This week's is none of these things, but concerns something I wholeheartedly and absolutely believe in: we need to sort out the offside law.
Two recent incidents - both involving Leeds United - have shown the shambles that the law, or rather the interpretation of the law, has become. In Leeds' home game with Spurs, Harry Kewell scored a fantastic goal even though one of his colleagues was clearly in an offside position when the move started. In that case, the linesman decided said colleague wasn't interfering with play.
A week later at Middlesbrough, the home side had a goal by Juninho chalked off when a linesman and referee decided that Hamilton Ricard, also making his stately way back from an offside position, was interfering with the course of the match.
But it's not just Leeds. Week after week we are seeing officials having to make this judgement call. Sometimes they decide one way, sometimes the other. At best it's a lottery, at worst a farce.
The law (Law 11 to be precise) has always been the same. It states in its opening words that it's not an offence merely to be in an offside position; you must be involved in active play by interfering with play, or interfering with an opponent, or gaining an advantage by being in that position.
For most of football's history, it was all so straightforward; lazy lunkhead forward goes offside, linesman raises flag, referee gives decision. In recent years though, FIFA (actually for once with perfectly good intentions, ie - making the game more attractive) decided to stick their oar in. They asked referees to start interpreting the forwards' positions and to decide if, in their opinion, those players were actively interfering with play or seeking to gain advantage.
Of course, when it comes to the 'seeking to gain an advantage' bit, the ref can have no bloody idea. He is not a mind reader. But even more difficult is the fact that the forwards now saunter back towards the halfway line with all the innocence of a pre-pubescent choirboy, knowing that the hapless officials are now inclined (and indeed under official edict) to give them the benefit of the doubt: "See me ref, I'm a good boy, just trying to get back onside, in no way trying to seek an advantage or interfering with play..."
This is the purest twaddle.
At one level, no less an authority than the great Bill Nicholson once said: "If they’re not interfering with play, what the hell are they doing on the pitch?"
At the other end of the scale, I myself have dabbled in the art of defending, albeit at a very, very pathetic level. But even a Hackney Marshes centre-half knows the truth that Alan Hansen would only bring himself to hint at on Match Of The Day last week. And it is this - as defenders run out, away from their own goal, they still have a small amount of their peripheral vision, and a larger chunk of their concentration, zeroed-in on the forwards trotting behind them. The position of the forwards obviously affects that which the defenders take, even if those forwards are in a technically offside position. It is human nature, common sense, to prepare yourself for the next imminent danger.
All of which wouldn’t matter if it wasn't for the detrimental effects that this wishy-washy interpretation of the offside law is having now and will have in the future. For now it is just the uncertainty outlined above, but in the future it will actually start to have the opposite effect to the one that FIFA set out to achieve, (ie - to entertain the fans).
Teams will start to realise that they can no longer push up their back four with any likelihood of catching opponents offside; goals like Kewell’s will continue to be scored, coaches will respond by pulling the whole team back 30 yards with the defence lined up at the penalty spot and the game will deteriorate into the re-enactment of medieval sieges so beloved of the Italians in the Sixties and Seventies.
Is that what FIFA want? Cos that's you’ll get.
The solution in this case lies in the hands of the administrators. Let offside mean offside, and if that means that a few more forwards have to work a bit harder for their 40 grand a week, that’s just a happy side-effect.
HAVE YOUR SAY...
Are FIFA over-complicating the offside rule? Should offside mean offside without all this extra nonsense? Or should refs be up to the job so defenders can rely on them more? Tell us what you think be e-mailing us at
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