Jeremy over at SoccerWorld has a post up about the ‘new’ offside interpretation in use for the past year or so and how it allowed a goal to count when a player, uninvolved with play, was very offside:
There was much discussion this weekend of Newcastle’s controversial first goal against West Ham. For those of you who missed it, West Ham was leading 2-0 just before half time when James Milner fired the ball towards the goal. Newcastle’s Scott Parker was clearly in an offside position, but he didn’t touch the ball as it sailed past him and into the far corner of the goal. The linesman raised his flag to indicate Parker’s offside status, but referee Uriah Rennie let the goal stand because Parker wasn’t interfering with play. Those are the facts. Now let the arguments begin.
There’s nothing quite as fun and invigorating as a good offside debate. So hop on over to Jeremy’s site and join in! I personally think the referee in this case made the right call which I noted in detail at SoccerWorld. The ref followed the guidelines to the letter and any player clearly offside should be safely ignored by the keeper and defense. Easier said than done I admit, but that player isn’t getting an advantage by being there if they’re not obstructing free movement of the defense and aren’t blocking the keeper’s sight line.
Fire away!
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January 22nd, 2007 at 8:40 pm
It’s “OFFSIDE.” Not “OFFSIDES.” 🙂
January 22nd, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Picky picky picky. You say tomMAYto I say toMAHto 🙂
January 23rd, 2007 at 2:28 am
on a semi-related note, during my job hunt here in silicon valley, and as a tech guy, i continue to run across companies doing cool stuff. one of them, SportVision, are the folks who do the 1st down markers for NFL games, the nascar tracking, and even some soccer stuff apparently – including the dreaded offside call. check out the vids on their site:
http://www.sportvision.com/
p.s. i always click on ‘comments’ – which is actually the comments rss feed. 🙁
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:14 am
I probably need to add ‘Feed’ to that. I had more stuff on that line originally and made each link as small as possible.
That is pretty cool. I read an article about technology where they were embedding RFID like chip into the player’s shinguards and a grid of Linux computers read sensor data and was able to create a virtual 3D representation of all the players on the field and the ball – so the computer could tell the position of the players when the ball was kicked and signal offsides or not to the referees.
Now I’m a geek extraordinaire, but I think that takes something away from the game. Can you imagine how boring post-match talk would be if we couldn’t argue with the referee and AR calls? 🙂