It’s not done, T_SQUARE. What you’re talking about is sticking the goalie on the bench and putting another forward in to try to put extra pressure on the opposing defense; it wouldn’t necessarily do a lot of good in soccer anyway, and even if it were legal and useful there are a number of issues:
Once that goalie goes out, he can’t come back in. Subbing a backup goalie in during overtime (“extra time”) in a tense and important game, especially in the World Cup, is always a bad idea. You only get three substitutions for the game anyway; it takes one to take out the goalie and put in a forward, another to take out the forward and put the goalie back in in overtime, and if you’ve already used another substitution and then one of your players gets hurt you’re fucked.
That is a big freakin’ goal, and nobody except the goalie can save shots with their hands. Generally if someone on the other team punts the ball all the way down the field, your goalie can come up, grab it and kick it to one of your defenders. In this situation, though, it may well go in the net and now you have a nigh-impossible hill to climb.
The stadium clock doesn’t represent the official game time–the referee keeps the time, while the stadium clock just counts up from 0 without having any idea what the actual time left is. After the stadium clock indicates the end of a period of play, the referee tells them they’ve actually got a few minutes left from various stoppages earlier like out of bounds, substitutions, injuries etc.–usually somewhere around three minutes, but sometimes less in a clean, fast-paced game or more if there’ve been a lot of injuries and/or fouls. Basically there’s no way to know how much time you have left until the stadium clock actually ticks 45’ or 90’.
There are probably other reasons, but you can already see that it’s not a good idea logistically.
It’s also worth noting that intentionally obscuring the goalie’s view in soccer can get you an offside call when you wouldn’t have necessarily broken the rule otherwise.
That’s what the question is about. Those who are answering differently presumably are not hockey fans, as the question pertains to a specific hockey strategy.
I love the relegation system! I wish we had it here, but for many reasons it wouldn’t fly–mostly corporate sponsorship, TV deals, etc. but also because the USA is such that there are really big cities and really, really small towns and if a Detroit team lost its spot to a team from Wyoming the new major-league team wouldn’t have a fanbase. It’s too bad, though, I really love the idea; over here games between the bottom two teams at the end of the season aren’t worth watching, but over there they’re exciting.
It is just a much larger disadvantage to leave a goal unguarded in soccer than in hockey, because you can curve the soccer ball very easily. You could plant a sequoia 10 yards in front of a professional soccer player and they’d still hit the goal 9 times out of 10.
zagloba, it works like this. We’re assuming the goalie is in the net, because that makes it easier to understand.
The goalie’s guarding the net, and there are three or four defenders sort of scattered around in the defending zone, so to speak; one offensive player has the ball and is dribbling forward, while his teammate runs past the last defender–so that he only has the goalie to beat–and then waits for a pass. If the other guy tries to pass it to him, or if he tries to impede the goalie’s vision so that the player with the ball can score, it’s offside.
The technical wording is that a player can’t be closer to the net than the second-to-last defender (including the goalkeeper) and then become involved in a play. It’s perfectly OK to receive a pass and then go past all the defenders and face the goalie one-on-one, but you can’t “cherry-pick” by standing between the net and the defense and then take a pass and score.
I should add that corner kicks, throw-ins, free kicks etc. to start plays near the net don’t count and there it’s OK to be past the defenders to try to “one-time” a ball into the net…but if a play starts developing gradually and then you sneak behind the defense, you’ve committed a foul and the other team gets the ball back.
If you’re still confused, [this](javascript: var mwin = ‘’; mwin=window.open(’/en/laws/flash/start.html’,‘LawsoftheGame2005_Flash’,‘resizable=no, width=800,height=600’);mwin.focus() is FIFA’s exhaustive Offside tutorial in Flash, with diagrams.
Um… That is so not FIFA’s exhaustive Offside tutorial in Flash, with diagrams.
But if you’re really keen and already understood the offside rule, you might be able to make an exhaustive tutorial using the information you learned there.
Weird! Well, it’s been too long since I mucked around in Flash, and I can’t be arsed to steal it or look for an animated GIF tool–which I prefer to Flash, but haven’t done in a long time either.
mhendo, I was afraid the link would be messy. Thanks for fixing it for me!
Thanks for the link and the explanation. The animation helped, but the music was torture!
Seems to me it would be very complicated for players and officials to keep track of all this during the rush of play. Do offsides violations get called frequently? Looks like there are lots of opportunities for the defense to move their second last man so as to trick the offense into an offside position.
It’s not difficult, actually. Especially in FIFA now that the ref and his entire crew of assistants and such have wireless headsets; assistant refs are always down there when a team is on the attack, anyway, and are looking straight from the side. It’s really not hard to keep track of; every once in a while you see an offside call get missed one way or the other, but for the most part referees know what to look for. If you think about it, a quarterback knows how to tell which receiver has beaten the cornerback and both safeties, because he knows what to look for.
As Alive At Both Ends noted, that strategy you mentioned does happen. I seem to recall that Mexico likes to use it; they pulled it off pretty well once or twice against Argentina recently. But also like AABE said, if you mistime it it’s easy to give a one-on-one scoring chance, which favors the shooter immensely more than in any other sport if he’s got any kind of talent. Basically if the guy gets the ball before you can trap him offside, he’s golden. It’s tougher to pull off than you’d think, but it works great when it does work–basically a free save.
Duhr–forgot that it’s the assistant referee that calls it anyway. So, yeah, that guy with the flag on the sideline? He’s looking directly from the side where he can see who’s lined up with whom, and he points the flag out if someone goes offside and tries to get involved in the play or interfere with the goalie’s line of sight.
The problem is that the original link at the FIFA site is a javascript popup link which, i believe, will only work if clicked at the originating website.
It was a matter of going into the source code and finding the url for the actual flash page.
On a similar theme, last season, or the season before, Manchester City’s Keeper fancied his chances as a forward,m so towards the end of the game, they pulled off an outfield player, put on their reserve keeper, and David James (who had been in goal for the match to date) went forward to try his luck as an attacker. Never seen anything like it before
I tried to find the exact game this happened, I’m pretty sure it was last year and I’m guessing it might have been a cup game.
James didn’t have much going for him as a striker except his height and the fact that he kept getting in everyone’s way, unfortunately, including his own team.
At the expense of resurrecting an old(er) thread, it’s perhaps worth noting that Portugal did just this in the final minutes of their Semi-final game against France.
Rather odd to see a blue striped shirt in the mix on Portugal’s corner kick.
Really, in a knockout game, the risk of having a goal scored on an empty net is pretty much meaningless anyways. Being eliminated from the World Cup by a score of 1-0 isn’t any better than being eliminated by a score of 2-0. I would venture to guess that the infrequency of adding the keeper to the attack in such situations is more due to how little it would help than to how risky it is for him to be so far forward.
is FIFA’s exhaustive Offside tutorial in Flash, with diagrams.