A new message appears in my email inbox. 'You need to find a new name for your column now that the offside rule no longer exists', quips the anonymous sender.
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Does the offside rule still exist? It's a moot existential point. Of course the rule still exists on paper. Visit the FIFA website and there, alongside Sepp Blatter's latest deranged outburst, you'll find it: Law 11 - Offside. But following instructions issued by FIFA in October 2003, nobody seems to understand the law any more. And this begs the question: 'Can a rule that nobody understands really exist?' Now there's something for all you Philosophy Football t-shirt wearers to chew over.
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Southampton manager Gordon Strachan is clearly in the offside atheist camp. 'You might as well scrap offside now if you are not going to rule that offside', fumed the outspoken Scot after Ruud van Nistelrooy stepped back from an offside position to bundle home Manchester United's winner on Saturday. Even Sir Alex Ferguson was somewhat agnostic in his reaction. 'I haven't seen it again but this first-phase rule is confusing', admitted the United manager.
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Keith Hackett, head of the referee's association and defender of the faith, thinks the officials called it right. 'When the ball was played into the Southampton box on Saturday, van Nistelrooy was offside', said Hackett. 'But he wasn't active, and the assistant deemed him to be passive. When the ball is played into the box again it is the second phase, and he's not in an offside position so he can come back into play.' Er, right. That's as clear as mud. BBC pundit Alan Hansen was not impressed by the official explanation: 'This rule is absolute nonsense', wrote the former Liverpool defender in his BBC News column. 'What is passive or active? What is second phase? Do me a favour.'
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FIFA insists that there is no change to the offside rule - just new guidance on how to interpret it. Let me try to explain. The current law says that a player in an offside position can only be penalised if he is 'involved with active play' by 'interfering with play', 'interfering with an opponent' (stop sniggering at the back), or 'gaining an advantage by being in that position'. The problem with these concepts is that they are inevitably very subjective. For example, what does 'interfering with play' mean? As Bill Shankly once said: 'If a player is not interfering with play or seeking to gain an advantage, then what is he doing on the pitch?'
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Or what about 'interfering with an opponent'? The new guidance says that this means 'preventing an opponent from playing or being able to play the ball, or making a gesture or movement while standing in the path of the ball to deceive or distract an opponent'. But a defender can just as easily be distracted by a forward running off the ball or, in Ruud van Nistelrooy's case, lurking at the back post in an offside position. And what if van Nistelrooy was distracting defenders, not by gesture or movement, but by whinnying like a horse? Is that interference?
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FIFA's stated aim is 'to protect attacking play intended to lead to a goal'. But perversely the new directive could result in teams adopting much more cautious and negative tactics. 'You will now get teams defending deeper and deeper and you are not going to have a game', predicts Alan Hansen. 'Teams will be scared to come out and defend higher up the pitch.'
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Tampering with the offside rule - or its interpretation - is a dangerous strategy. You see, this isn't just any old rule we're talking about. It's a totemic rule. The ability to explain the offside rule is a badge of authenticity that says 'I am a real football fan'. Throughout the land you will find recent converts to football (eg, women, posh blokes, homosexuals) who can recite the offside rule in the same way that Catholics can recite the Catechism. But by making the offside rule so Byzantine that nobody understands it, FIFA could be effectively destroying it.
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And where would football be without it? Without offside we'd have anarchy - or goal-hanging, which is probably worse. Without offside there can be no offside trap (and Arsenal's trophy cabinet would be considerably barer). Surely, there is no finer sight in football than that of a well-marshalled back four stepping up as one to catch their opponents offside? Without offside we'd have no battle of wits between a defence pushing up and an attacking team trying to beat the offside trap. In short, without offside, football as we know it could cease to exist.
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Read on:
spiked-issue: Sport
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