First of all, I'm astonished to have to remind some people (in fact most of the people I've bumped into today) of the first line of Law 11, the Offside law.
¶ "It is not an offence in itself to be in an offside position". OK? So Louis Saha may have been standing in an offside position against Arsenal last night, but that does not necessarily mean that he will be penalised for offside.
¶ And secondly, the officials, Lee Mason and his assistant, got it right by allowing Saha's goal to stand.
¶ The law says a player is offside if he "gains an advantage playing a ball that rebounds to him off an opponent having been in an offside position."
¶ So if the ball had "rebounded" off the Arsenal defender to Saha, the he would have been given offside. But, Mason decided that it was not a rebound, but a kick (albeit a scuffed kick) by the defender. That has the effect of resetting play.
¶ With a new phase of play having started, Saha has been played onside by the Arsenal defender, who is adjusged to have kicked the ball to Saha.
¶ No offside.
¶ I'll freely admit this is a tricky one to call, but Mason and his assistant shwoed all their experience in giving this decision.
¶ Television showed what it said was an identical call in the Chelsea vs Sunderland game when a through ball glanced off the top of Jon Obi Mikel's head to a Sunderland attacker. Offside was given because the path of the ball had hardly deviated, unlike the Everton example where its path was changed by 90 degrees.
¶ Complicated Yes, but correct.
4 comments:
Good idea. The design was crap.
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