Offside in WC Opener

Two of my soccer buddies told me about a supposedly controversial offside call that denied a goal in the WC opener between Mexico and South Africa. So I had to go back and watch it on ESPN3.com. What a wonderful website. If you have access to it and haven’t taken advantage of it, you’re missing out. So here’s what I found.

In the 39th minute of the match Mexico took a corner kick. As the ball traveled through the air to a spot outside the goal area, the South African ‘keeper moved toward the front of the goal area leaving Carlos Vela standing with only one defender between him and the goal line. The ball was deflected by a Mexican player to Carlos Vela who chest trapped it and then played it into the goal. The Assistant Referee immediately raised his flag for offside.

After several seconds, Efan Ekoku declared, “He’s onside.” He continued, “… with a South African defender right on the goal line. Surely! Well, that can’t be offside. How can he be offside? There is a defender on the line! Couldn’t have given it for handball. It comes clearly off the chest of Vela. What an awful decision. They can’t believe it. They should be one-nil ahead.” After play was restarted, Mr. Ekoku continued, “I don’t know what the Assistant Referee saw. The Referee seems to have blown it himself. You see him signal for maybe a foul. There was a touch at the near post.” Finally, Martin Tyler speaks up with only a few words but showed that he didn’t understand the offside call either.

THIS LEFT MILLIONS OF WATCHERS WITH A FALSE LESSON IN THE OFFSIDE LAW. Watchers believe the highly paid announcers and commentators are also highly education. Obviously not.

Minutes later when a another replay was shown of the corner kick, Mr. Tyler describes the goalkeeper’s movement forward and said that Carlos Vela was denied the World Cup opening goal, as if the referees wrongfully denied the goal. WRONG!!! At the moment the ball was touched by Carlos Vela’s teammate, Vela had only one defender nearer the goal line that himself. Here are the words from the FIFA Laws of the Game, which obviously neither Mr. Ekoku nor Mr. Tyler have ever read and understood:

A player is in an offside position if:
· he is nearer to his opponents’ goal line than both the ball and the second last opponent

I see only one defender closer to the goal line than Carlos Vela. See picture below. How many do you see?

In the upper left portion of the picture above the ball is being head flicked by a Mexican attacker. There were no defenders wide of the goal, only one defender near the goal post. Even the goalkeeper was farther from the goal line than Carlos Vela, #11, near the bottom of the picture. So Vela was in an offside position and subsequently interfered with play by playing it when it came to him. That’s the definition of an offside infraction!

Possibly Mr. Ekoku learned about offside from teammates or coaches and believes offside position is about one defender only since goalkeepers are most often closer to the goal line than everyone else on the field. BUT THAT’S WRONG. Offside is when a player is closer to the goal line than two opponents, regardless of what position they play or whether they wear gloves or not. (There is also the factor of being ahead of the ball and being in the opponents half of the field.)

If you want to read the entire Law 11, Offside, go to http://www.ussoccer.com/Referees/Laws-of-the-Game.aspx

This blog was started to point out the stupid things that American commentators said. But in this case, I just had to write about it. Hope it was helpful.

Here is another description of the valid offside call:
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/world-cup/blog?entryID=5275929&name=worldcup2010blog&cc=5901&ver=us