In my view, there are systemic problems with the offside law and the way VAR has been applied has magnified these.
The first and most fundamental problem is understanding what is the purpose of the offside law?
In my view the purpose could be expressed like this, “The purpose of the offside law is to prevent team’s gaining an advantage by having a player or players in an offside position.” If you accept that definition, or something like it then there is an immediate problem with one part of the law as it is written. That is the bit about a player coming back from an offside position and being in an onside position when he/she receives the ball. What is the difference between a player who was in an onside position and one who was in an offside position if when they get the ball the are in the same situation as each other? So the letter of the law is somewhat contradictory to the purpose or spirit of the law. That is down to IFAB who play lip service to the spirit of the game in the preface to the Laws but then seem to forget about it when actually formulate the wording of the laws. The same problem applies to the law on handball.
A consequence of not specifying the purpose of the law is amplified by VAR we now have players given offside by mm using technology that is only reliable to a few inches at best. I don’t believe that there is any advantage to an attacking player whose toe is 5mm ahead of a derender’s. So the first thing that the law needs to do is define what constitutes an advantage. There is no perfect answer to this, but the concept of the whole of an attacker’s body being ahead of the defender’s body is probably an improvement on what we currently have. Of course you will still have the problem of decisions being decided by m by technology that is only reliable to a few inches but at least the offside player would be more likely to be gaining an advantage than is currently the case.
So, how could the technology be improved? Well I would say that the main source of error is decide exactly when the ball is released. In ball technology may improve this in terms of objectivity but unless the frame rates on the cameras can match those of in ball technology there will still be some residual issues. It would be good if the PGMOL/IFAB could acknowledge the there are errors. One way of dealing with identifying when the ball is released would be to use two frames, one being the last frame where there is still contact with the body and the other where the ball has left the body and if either of those is onside then deciding that the goal stands.
That leaves corrections for camera angles etc. it would be a start to insist that all grounds should have cameras calibrated for offside use that cover the whole pitch - pretty basic stuff but as we have seen not necessarily the case.
OK returning to Friday’s decision, it seems to me that within the way that offside VAR currently operates it is just offside.
I think the dotted blue and red extensions are supposed to be perpendiculars to correct for the height of the foot off the ground, though they are not very convincing. There are issues with how the thickness of the lines reflect the errors in measurement, but if we assume that the best frame has been chosen, and it is as I hope I have indicated above a big assumption, then Bobb is just offside.
The first and most fundamental problem is understanding what is the purpose of the offside law?
In my view the purpose could be expressed like this, “The purpose of the offside law is to prevent team’s gaining an advantage by having a player or players in an offside position.” If you accept that definition, or something like it then there is an immediate problem with one part of the law as it is written. That is the bit about a player coming back from an offside position and being in an onside position when he/she receives the ball. What is the difference between a player who was in an onside position and one who was in an offside position if when they get the ball the are in the same situation as each other? So the letter of the law is somewhat contradictory to the purpose or spirit of the law. That is down to IFAB who play lip service to the spirit of the game in the preface to the Laws but then seem to forget about it when actually formulate the wording of the laws. The same problem applies to the law on handball.
A consequence of not specifying the purpose of the law is amplified by VAR we now have players given offside by mm using technology that is only reliable to a few inches at best. I don’t believe that there is any advantage to an attacking player whose toe is 5mm ahead of a derender’s. So the first thing that the law needs to do is define what constitutes an advantage. There is no perfect answer to this, but the concept of the whole of an attacker’s body being ahead of the defender’s body is probably an improvement on what we currently have. Of course you will still have the problem of decisions being decided by m by technology that is only reliable to a few inches but at least the offside player would be more likely to be gaining an advantage than is currently the case.
So, how could the technology be improved? Well I would say that the main source of error is decide exactly when the ball is released. In ball technology may improve this in terms of objectivity but unless the frame rates on the cameras can match those of in ball technology there will still be some residual issues. It would be good if the PGMOL/IFAB could acknowledge the there are errors. One way of dealing with identifying when the ball is released would be to use two frames, one being the last frame where there is still contact with the body and the other where the ball has left the body and if either of those is onside then deciding that the goal stands.
That leaves corrections for camera angles etc. it would be a start to insist that all grounds should have cameras calibrated for offside use that cover the whole pitch - pretty basic stuff but as we have seen not necessarily the case.
OK returning to Friday’s decision, it seems to me that within the way that offside VAR currently operates it is just offside.
I think the dotted blue and red extensions are supposed to be perpendiculars to correct for the height of the foot off the ground, though they are not very convincing. There are issues with how the thickness of the lines reflect the errors in measurement, but if we assume that the best frame has been chosen, and it is as I hope I have indicated above a big assumption, then Bobb is just offside.
