Football (soccer): the offsides rule is that much of a sacred cow?

Cafe Society
101

Well I think you’re mistaken in thinking that in the first place. The game isn’t perfect, but tweaks over time have made it better in my opinion (the passback rule, for one, that stops teams from completely killing the game in the closing minutes). However, if there’re no serious problems, what are we trying to fix?

Bear in mind also that much of the discussion put forward in this thread about the need for change clearly comes from people who don’t necessarily understand the intricacies of the game and you can see why hackles get raised. The point that’s being made over and over again is that the final number shows the outcome of the match, not the story of it. Football fans care about both - but are looking for passion, skill and resiliance. Perhaps it’s a mentality thing, but I’m sure I’m not the only fan that will accept losing 2-0 to a better team if my club played well and showed genuine effort. Losing 3-0, 5-0 or 27-0 really wouldn’t make much difference at the end of the day!

102

I don’t think anyone is saying that; I said exactly the opposite in fact, and tweaks go on relatively often. The distinction is in the scale of the change being proposed.

Yes, offside could be officiated better, with more benefit of the doubt given to attackers. We cut out the back pass rule because it led to stultifying boredom as teams just knocked the ball around in defence. But changes should be implemented to require more skill, not less. I don’t know how many times I can possibly say this: defence is not intrinsically negative. Punishing it is arbitrary, and does not increase the spectacle one jot. As long as defence requires skill, it’s fine. I repeat: if you don’t appreciate the value of good defence, you’re only watching half the game.

The sort of changes being put forward would completely change the character of football, and the point is that actually, we’re pretty happy with it much the way it is. No-one is saying it’s perfect. No-one is saying that no rule changes should ever be countenanced, as long as their unintended consequences are considered. But when people who don’t watch the game come along and propose things that would transform the most popular sport in the world into a completely different animal, they shouldn’t be surprised to meet a bit of resistance. And frankly, they should put a bit more effort into proving that there’s a problem in the first place, rather than acting upset when their simplistic complaints and rather facile “solutions” aren’t met with universal acclamation.

'Scuse me, I seem to be rather grumpy today.

103

I never said things were perfect exactly the way they are, nor did i ever suggest that no changes whatsoever should be made. My whole argument in this thread has been an attempt to deal with the suggestions that would change soccer so radically as to make it almost unrecognizable, such as reducing the number of players on the field.

As Dead Badger notes, there have been attempts in the past to implement rules designed to keep the game flowing, and i have no problem with that. I remember when the back pass rule was introduced, and i remember thinking that it was a good rule. I also actually think the suggestion for a “blue line” style offside rule (a la ice hockey) is quite interesting, even if i’m not sure whether i’d actually want to see it implemented; it would depend on the specifics. And i’m also perfectly happy to contemplate any suggestion that would improve the officiating or make it easier for the officials to do their job properly. I think that rules should be enforced properly, and players penalized for non-compliance, as in the cases where the defensive wall on a free kick refuses to move back the required distance, or continues to edge forward after the referee has shown them where to stand.

But arguing for incremental improvements designed to address the occasional slow and boring game, and to discourage “sitting on the ball” and slowing down play, is NOT the same as arguing that soccer is inherently flawed because there are too many people on the field, or because not enough goals are scored. As i suggested earlier in the thread, i think defense is an important part of sporting contests,* and the idea that more scoring makes for an inherently better game is a simplistic way to think about sports.

  • maybe that’s because i’m a Ravens fans, and defense is about all my team has going for it. :slight_smile:
104

Some straw men here.
I never said I can’t appreciate the skill of defensive play. But you’d really get a chance to see that skill in a more open game instead of packing the box.

I never claimed 0-0 is a common result.

As far as the WC goes, sure, that idea didn’t work out (and really should’ve been tried in a lower competition before trying it in a WC). But just because that particular didn’t work doesn’t mean that increasing scoring isn’t a good thing. YOu just have to find the right way to do it? Maybe there isn’t a good way, but there’s no reason to experiment at some of the lower levels of play.

And while the whole point of attacking flair is to test itself against resolute defenses, it’s at the point where the defenses win far too often. A bit of balance is nice. And I hate seeing teams with no attacking flair get rewarded for bunkering. Who likes to watch a team dominate the run of play and fail to get the win?

And why is Sepp trying to reward more attacking flair? Because that’s what fans like to see.

How do you come up with the idea that more goals = lessening of skills involved? I want to see more skillful soccer. Did tinkering with the offside rule (even is onside) lead to less skillful soccer? Why make this leap?

I never said this sort of game can’t be entertaining. But I do think it’s possible that they can be more entertaining of skillful attacking soccer gets rewarded with goals. It’s not like soccer has always been this low scoring.

I was responding to “there’s always been a principle that the game is officiated in the same way at all levels”. Using the wireless is officiating the game differently. Plus I think it’s kid of a dumb principal. Use the technology to make it a better officiated game when available. Otherwise you make do with what you have.

Nice dodge. Which game do you think will likely be more exciting?

It happens enough. And if it’s possible to eliminate it, shouldn’t we try? I’m not saying it is possible without changing the game too much, but I say it’s worth looking into.

Because you might end up with even more entertaining soccer. Why not try?

Another dodge. Which game do you think will likely be more exciting?

105

You’re contradicting yourself here. More often than not, a team is able to score in a match. But that’s still the defence ‘winning’ too often? Do you never want to see a team keep a clean sheet, or what? Every third piece of attacking play ending up with a goal? Because that would really make goals remain special, wouldn’t it :rolleyes:

All the suggestions of major changes that have been proposed here involve rewarding less skillful players. If you can’t understand the explanations already given, then you need to accept that you don’t understand the game very well.

Errrr, cite? Way back I posted a link to all the FA Cup final results, and there’s no trend downwards in the average score.

I don’t see it’s so dumb - unless you just don’t want to accept that it exists for the purposes of equality throughout a global game.

It doesn’t happen often. And the striving for absolutely clinical accuracy and perfection isn’t familiar in sports outside of America. Shock and fluke results are part of the way we like things.

It’s not a dodge. It’s called an honest answer, but apparently that doesn’t count if it’s not the one you wanted to hear. As for your question, again, I don’t know. The score tells me who the winner was. That’s the purpose of keeping score. It’s not there to tell me how exciting the match was, that’s why you watch the match.

106

You haven’t demonstrated that skill isn’t already apparent (except maybe to you). And you haven’t demonstrated that increasing the scoring will make that skill more readily apparent. You haven’t demonstrated that simply packing the box is a successful tactic. You haven’t suggested any way in which the game could be made “more open” without knock-on effects. You haven’t done anything really but complain that there aren’t enough goals, and that something should be done. It’d be nice to have a bit more butter on our toast here. Other people have given you statistics, cites, anecdata, the lot; you’ve blithely ignored it all and just restated your unproven claims.

Whuh? An average of three goals a game in the Prem so far. Two of the most exciting, flowing teams topping the league, having scored 7 and 6 in two of their recent matches. Attendances high, fans entertained, blah blah as already explained ad infinitum. Where is this problem that you perceive? Could you please justify it, rather than just baldly asserting it?

Is this really happening worryingly often? Can you back up such a claim? And when it does happen, can you really say you don’t find watching a desperate siege exciting, as wave after wave of attacks fall upon a resolute defence? Where would be the excitement there if the outcome were a foregone conclusion? Why would the attacking team need to bother being good?

Honestly, that was such a trivial change I hardly see the point in it at all; its effects were negligible - in fact given the difficulty in officiating when players are precisely level (due to the linesman’s view being blocked), they were arguably non-existent. Offside itself, however, did exactly the opposite to what you want; it made scoring more difficult, and in so doing increased the level of skill required. How? It eliminated a cheap offensive tactic, namely hanging around the goal waiting for long balls in to the box. The key word there is “cheap”. The back-pass was another such tactic, this time a defensive one, and it was rightly stamped out. You haven’t nominated any specific defensive tactic that you find lacking in skill, and would like to remedy. You are merely expressing dissatisfaction with the very idea that a team can defend well, and thereby not lose to a team with a stylish attack. Why can’t you see the difference between these two approaches? One is rational, one is not. One is reasoned, one is not.

Think of this - the offside rule made scoring more difficult, and yet thereby forced players to be more skilful by eliminating a boring tactic that could be implemented by donkeys. Can you see how this illustrates perfectly why your thinking is entirely backwards? By very definition, if you make something easier, you have made it less taxing to perform, and it thus requires less skill. If you don’t need to perform complex magic to score a goal, you won’t. Bye bye, Ronaldinho; all we need are lumps like Fatty “Shoot On Sight” Lampard in the brave new world.

The Really Important Bit:

Augh! We do alter the game; you’ve been (repeatedly) given two prime examples of rule changes that increased the levels of skill required to play the game, and in so doing made it better; one defensive, one attacking. Both of these changes were implemented in the right way: identify a specific tactic which is considered unaesthetic, and carefully attempt to eliminate it. That’s how it should be done.

What we do not do is put the cart before the horse and simply try whatever cockamamie idea comes into our heads on the offchance that it’ll mean we can read some bigger numbers. There needs to be some underlying rationale above and beyond the entirely inane and insupportable theory that “More Goals = Good”.

Can you actually name a specific tactic which you don’t enjoy watching, short of “defending well”? At this point, I very strongly doubt it. This is what people are trying to elicit from you; any indication that you actually know and understand the game and have some real idea of what you’re trying to fix, as opposed to a superficial distaste because it’s just not wham-bang enough for you.

If you respond to any of my post, please respond to this last bit. It’s the crux of the matter, for me.

107

Well, I’m just an ugly Yankee, so of course my opinion is pretty much worthless. But I think top-level soccer could be much more interesting and exciting. For the record, I appreciate defense: my rant about the anti-defense attitude of the National Basketball Association would be far longer and more heartfelt than anything about international football, trust me.

But I do think top-level soccer could be improved. I suppose the crux of the matter is that I don’t find it that entertaining to watch a team trying to score with eight defenders in and around the penalty area. In my mind there’s little skillful defense displayed by that – it’s just a matter of get enough bodies around that even if one defender misses, someone else will be close enough to cover.

And because soccer’s nature is that adding equal amounts of attackers and defenders favors the defense, any team can bunker down at any time. There’s no good counter to this, because if the opposing side sends more players forward, they lose more in defense than they gain in offense.

Which isn’t to say I have an answer. I (along with many others no doubt) have thought about a couple possibilities, but of course don’t know how they’d work in practice.

One is just lowering the number of players: with nine on nine, possibly on a slightly smaller field, there will be less clogging and more space for interesting passing, and more skillful defense required.

Another possibility is liberalizing the offsides rule. Eliminating it all together would require adding some kind of rule to keep the goalkeeper from being interfered with, sort of like the crease rule in hockey (e.g. no attacker can enter the goal area unless the ball is there). I don’t know if this would lead to a game of lob the ball into the penalty area from halfcourt; top-level keepers (assuming interference is strongly called) would eat up a lot of huck-and-hope passes, and turning a pass from directly behind you into a shot isn’t easy.

But it’s possible you wouldn’t need to go that far: by making it only possible to be offside in the penalty area, you avoid cheap junk goals, but allow a little more room for attackers to spread the defense.

I don’t know how they’d work, but it would be interesting to see how matches played under these rules would come out.

Of course, changing soccer rules is very difficult; I think the single biggest reason that soccer is the world’s most popular sport is that the exact same game (as far as rules) can be played, in an interesting way, by six year olds, by the top atheletes in the world, and by 45 year olds. It would be very difficult to make substantial changes to only top-level matches.

108

:confused: Apart from corners and free kicks, when do you see eight defenders in the area? And in those situations, the unpredictibility of a crowded box adds a randomness which statistically favours the attacking team, as is intended from such set pieces.

109

(a) How is this any different to not having an offside rule? You’ll just have forwards standing on the edge of the penalty area waiting to bang home any long balls his own defense sends forward.
(b) Those of you trying to change the nature of the offside rule seem to be forgetting a consequence of it that aids the very play that you want - more goals, or, at the very least, more attacking play. The offside rule allows the defenders to play further up the field safe in the knowledge that the opposition are not standing right next to their goalkeeper. This in turn means they can get more involved in attacking play themselves, with full-backs aiding the attacking wingers and even the central defenders being able to get close enough to put balls in for the strikers, not to mention getting shots on goal themselves (see Samba, Christopher) and joining the attack for corners and set plays, which then in turn gives the opposition strikers a little more room to play with when they are able to beat the offside trap.

I’m sure you all have good intentions, but please try and think through the unintended consequences of your rule changes instead of the Underpants Gnome-style 1. Change rule, 2. ???, 3. Goalfests!

110

I think a hockey-style blue line would work in soccer, but then again, I think field behind the goal would be interesting, too.

111

I saw a reference earlier in this thread that the NASL has a 35-yard-line to dermarcate where offside play was legal. How did that work out?

Someone made a good point above about Americans seeing mostly only World Cup games, and thus seeing more defense than would normally be played in pro leagues. That makes a lot of sense – the U-20 (?) Championships that were recently broadcast from Canada seemed to have a lot more action than the World Cup games I’d seen.

…

Another strawman that needs addressing, but admittledly subtle one – my OP specifies a slight tweak to one existing law, not a complete revamping of the laws.

A bunch of 10-8 games – or perhaps even 6-5 games – would constitute a failure of the concept, IMHO. That’s changing the game way too much. The idea, essentially, is to attempt to increase the scoring by roughly one to one-and-a-half goals per game per side without altering the game so much that purists are offended.

3-1 is not a goalfest. 4-3 is not a goalfest. 5-4 … eh … that’s borderline.

One thing about the offside rule to which I must confess ignorance until this thread: I thought the player was only offside upon receipt of the ball behind defenders. I didn’t realize that it mattered where the pass’s recipient was at the moment the ball was kicked by the trailing attacker.

No wonder offsides is so difficult to call. How can the referee see both spots on the field simultaneously?

But could offside be regarded differently – the lead attacker can out-run the defenders, make some space for himself, and then curl back while the pass is in transit to receive a legal pass from a trailing attacker? That way, the referee could concentrate on just the pass recipient, and where he is in relation to the defenders when the ball comes.

I understand these questions can be vexing to lifelong fans of the sport. So I want to let it be known that I do appreciate the patience shown in explaining the fine points in this thread. Much ignorance is being fought in here, even though we’re not in GQ.

112

Another non-American here to disagree with you (despite my location, I am English). I had been favoring a slight increase in goal size so as to slightly increase the average number of goals, but without changing the nature of the game.

113

Bingo!

114

I’m sorry, but this thread is really fucking annoying. “I don’t like the game, and I’d like it to be a bit closer to a game I do like!”. “I don’t understand the game, and I’d like it to change to fit my attention span!”. Fuck off.

115

Well, I think others have been advocating far more wholesale changes than you have, to which a lot of people have been responding as well as your OP. Moreover, I think you underestimate the scope of the changes you suggest. Increasing scoring while preserving the quality of the goals is a far from trivial task, and what may appear to be an easy solution will almost invariably turn out to have considerable knock-on effects.

4-3 most certainly is a goalfest, in the context of football. This is what I’m trying to get across; as long as there’s not a complete lack of goals (and no such paucity affects football), then what constitutes a “goalfest” is entirely relative to expectations. This obsession with score for score’s sake seems to me to completely miss the point, which I reiterate: score is only a manifestation of what the game was like; it does not define it. Rubbish games and thrillers will exist in the exact same proportions as before if we added a goal or two per game. They would merely have bigger numbers after them.

If, as you claim in your OP, it’s not really about higher scores but about the ability to recover from deficits, then I think it behoves you to demonstrate that deficits in football are any less recoverable than in other sports. 2-0 is a solid lead, sure enough; you’d expect the odds of a comeback to be commensurately low. It’s the equivalent of a good 25 point lead in American football, I’d say. How often are those overturned? And if we make scoring easier, is it not easier for both sides? Would 4-1 not just become the new 2-0, and we’d be back where we started, only with each individual goal less of a spectacle?

It’s been questioned by some as to whether it’s reliably possible at all with human vision. I thought offside was outstandingly refereed in the last World Cup, though, so I don’t believe it’s unattainable.

But then he’d be back with the defenders between him and the goal, rather nixing the purpose of having made the run in the first place; the defenders wouldn’t need to follow him, because they know he has to come back. If you defined it as you suggest, based solely on the position of the recipient as he takes the ball, then you’ll have just eliminated the skills of well-timed runs and accurate through-balls from the game because a player can’t receive a ball past the last defender. It’s a non-starter.

Not at all; it’s fun to actually discuss play mechanics and answer questions. What grates is when people are simply asserting an ill-informed view as fact, and demanding to know why nobody is impressed (which I don’t think you’ve done, or at least not nearly as much as others). There’s also a degree of residual grumpiness due to the fact that inevitably when football is discussed in a US context, we get presented with a laundry list of what the game “needs” to succeed, but this wears off in the face of genuine interest.

While not wishing to get into a One True Football Fan argument, I think a lot of people are guilty of judging the sport based on an extremely superficial understanding and appreciation of it. If you need a goal every 10 minutes to tell you what the ebb and flow of a match is, then quite honestly I don’t think you’ve watched enough football to truly appreciate it. I do think the way matches are televised is at least partly to do with this - with narrow camera angles it’s often quite difficult to properly see the movement of teams off the ball, and how skilful build-up play draws the opposition out of shape, crafting openings elsewhere on the pitch. I do think that more than a few of the people suggesting changes should watch a lot more matches before holding forth quite so stridently, though.

116

Please just stop for a moment and think about whether 10-8, or 6-5, really would or could be a meaningful representation of football matches which currently finish 2-0. Increasing the ‘goals per side’ :rolleyes: just increases unpredictibility, surely?

The thing is, nobody is saying ‘hey, this football thing is great, I’m sure you’re making money and having fun, but just imagine if the Americans were watching as well!’. We’re quite happy as we are, there’s already stupid money being thrown around, the main concern being how to make sure it filters down to lower levels. If Americans watch the game and decide it’s not for them, then fine, go back to a “high scoring” game. Some will decide they like soccer, and that’s the places MSL can build an audience from.

117

I agree with you completely here. The section of my post you quoted supports my agreement, I believe.

This is a good point.

…

A thought – I’ve noticed that all the non-U.S. posters in this thread are from the U.K. Might fans from other football hotbeds feel differently? I wonder what Brazilian or Argentinian fans may think of their attackers getting called offside on what to them may be questionable calls? Do South American fans kind of have a “c’mon, let 'em play!” mentality towards atttacking soccer?

118

About this point specifically – get up 2-0 on the U.S. team in the World Cup, and you’ve got the game won. Even if it’s only in the 10th minute. :smiley:

119

Yeah, you’d say that, but you’d be completely and utterly wrong. 2-0 is the equivalent of 14-0, not 25-0. A 25 point lead requires a minimum of 4 scores to tie.

14 point leads are overcome all the time, as are 2-0 leads in the NHL.

120

I think Dead Badger’s more correct here. Scoring a TD in American football is a lot easier and more frequent than scoring a goal in football. One goal in football is at least worth two touchdowns in American football – maybe more, depending on how much time remains.