If we want to make it more confusing we can throw in “offsides player doesn’t touch ball but creates advantage for his team”
Offsides player is standing right by goalie who dives for ball but dives into offsides player
Offsides player is screening goalie, hops over shot and ball goes in.
Sometimes you’ll see those called and sometimes not.
Handling used to be more simple. “Did the man in intentionally handle the ball???” that’s it.
Now they throw in “Is his arm in an unnatural position”…really at full speed those can be tough for a ref.
A player is offside if two things happen:
Interfering with an opposition player, either physically, or by being in the line of sight of the player, satisfies 2. But sometimes one can question the failure to call it.
Another thing I’ve noticed is a lot of talk about if the last man fouls it has to be a red. That’s not the rule. It has to be denial of an obvious goal scoring opportunity, and while that often aligns with the last man committing a foul, it doesn’t have to.
Talking incorrectly about calls is still better than them talking about things unrelated to the game like what’s being talked about on Twitter.
Yes, well, Twits have little value. 
As for handling, as Dale Sims was bringing up, the position of the arm has always been an issue. The Law has stated for some years (in English) that it is a direct free kick foul if a player other than the keeper in his own penalty area “deliberately handles the ball.” Note that the word used is “deliberately”, not “intentionally.” This is a very important distinction. The focus isn’t on the intent of the player (did he intend to use his arm to play the ball?), but rather on did he consciously move his arm into a position that resulted in it playing the ball.
Over the years, this distinction has lost some of its value. The classic mantra for some time has been “arm to ball, not ball to arm”, meaning any motion of the arm, consciously done or not (compare instinctive reaction), in a way that would intercept the ball is considered handling. But the bit about “unnatural position” still hints at the distinction. When a player is attempting some soccer move, like going to ground, or jumping, is he consciously putting his arm into a place that might intercept the ball, when he wouldn’t naturally put it there in accomplishing the move? After all, the arm has to be somewhere, and while it’s easy to keep it at one’s side, with hands clasped behind one’s back while standing up in front of the player with the ball, that’s hard to do when trying to make a sliding tackle, or jumping up to head the ball amidst a whole bunch of players in front of goal.
The easiest way to demonstrate the meaning of this is to think of how a keeper comes out towards a break-away forward trying to score. The keeper will have his hands out to the sides, to make himself as big a target as possible. He doesn’t know that the hand/arm will actually stop anything, and when the shot comes, he may not have time to even move it in an effort to stop the shot. But he’s deliberately putting them out there in the hopes that works. Now, imagine the player in question isn’t the keeper. If his arms are spread to the side as he rushes towards the break-away forward, pretty clearly he’s doing so deliberately, and it simply doesn’t matter in that case that the ball, when struck, goes straight into the arm.
As always, there is an element of subjective determination with handling. Most of the difficulty in second-guessing a referee on the subject comes from commentators, spectators, and even players having no idea exactly how the foul is determined. This is an endless source of annoyance for referees. :mad:
There is no such thing as “offsides” in association football.
No shortage of annoying pedants though.
On the contrary, there are far less of them than there ought to be.
In actuality, there’s no such thing in American football, either. It’s simply a commonly used descriptive term for the offense/offence in question. 