silvasleftleg said:Gouffran prevented Joe Hart from diving for the ball. True or false ?
False. How did he "prevent" Hart from diving? The possibility that the ball might deflect from an attacker in an offside position (and possibly Hart was put off more by the attackers in front of him rather than by Gouffran) is clearly not "challenging an opponent for the ball".
Indeed, clearly not offside.silvasleftleg said:Joe Hart wanted to dive but didn't because he deemed that Gouffran was in the way. The proof:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvbqneLRyks[/youtube]
End of story. Case closed.
Dubai Blue said:If the laws don't explicitly deem that as interfering with play, then the laws are quite clearly wrong and need changing/clarifying.
The laws are what FIFA say they are - until they change them again. It's the same for both sides - see Negredo's wrongly disallowed goal v Newcastle at the Etihad - but it's obviously not easy for officials. The assistant sees a player / players in an offside position but from his angle may not know if they're in the keeper's line of sight of the ball. He can only tell the ref that a player was in an offside position and leave it to the ref (who hasn't got a photographic memory or video replay) to remember if any of three players (in this case) might have been in the way. Had Jones had this video replay, I'm sure he'd have allowed the goal.