04/23/24
February 01, 2004
Scrap the offsides rule: Strait Time's columnist Godfrey Roberts suggests that one way to avoid many bad decisions by referees, especially in the EPL, is to remove the offsides rule from the book. Yay or nay? How would this change the play?
posted by billsaysthis to soccer at 08:46 PM - 11 comments
Don't hold back Sal!
posted by billsaysthis at 09:46 PM on February 01, 2004
Offside rule. Before it was more like Basketball with very high scores...
posted by BigCalm at 04:03 AM on February 02, 2004
Thanks for the link, BC, very educational for me.
posted by billsaysthis at 10:58 AM on February 02, 2004
No offsides rule is tantamount to anarchy in football, IMHO. To continue with the basketball analogy it would be like removing the 3-second violation. Tall guys like Shaq and Yao would simply stand under the basket and dunk all day. In the words of Edith Bunker, if it ain't broke, don't fix it!
posted by scully at 02:37 PM on February 02, 2004
I read this book called The Simple Game...i forget who the author is, and even though the book is in the other room i am too lazy to go find out right now. Anyway, it talked all about how football started and how it split between the ones that wanted to play out and out break your spine football and those that wanted it to stay a more gentleman's game. There was a rule that you couldn't make a forward pass! Thats when football split into rugby and football. Something like that... So when it began, football was very chaotic like the link BigCalm gave us above and it was exciting in my opinion. I would like to see some sort of revival of that game...maybe we can start a club where we play an annual match? Over time, there were more rules and more ways to prevent teams from scoring. Offsides being one of them. I don't know about scrapping the rule altogether...but i DO get very sick of seeing defender's fucking hands go up anytime someone makes a forward pass no matter how onsides the player is... What i would like to see is something like...maybe there should have to be at least 2 defenders in front of the pass for there to be offsides...it would probably be difficult for linesmen, but it would allow for more goals.
posted by StarFucker at 12:39 AM on February 03, 2004
Nice link Clamster, that taught me a few things. There's nothing wrong with football, and scrapping the offside rule, whilst making the job easier for the officials, would turn the game into a goal-hanging farce similar to that played in playgrounds across the country.
posted by squealy at 05:55 AM on February 03, 2004
maybe there should have to be at least 2 defenders in front of the pass for there to be offsides Interesting... do you mean that the offside would be determined by the position of the passer rather than the recipient of the pass? So one (or more, I guess) strikers could hang closer to the goal most of the time waiting for a long ball.
posted by billsaysthis at 12:07 PM on February 03, 2004
Lets see if i can explain what i mean without the help of a chalkboard. You know how the receiver of the pass has to be behind the last defender BEFORE the pass is kicked? Well i was thinking that it would be more exciting if there had to be at least 2 defenders for there to be an offside... That is, if Gerrard passes it to Cheyrou and only Ferdinand is there, its not offsides...but if Silvestre AND Ferdinand are there, it is... You see what i'm saying?
posted by StarFucker at 05:21 PM on February 03, 2004
So the change is more for the defense, them having to keep players further back to trigger the offsides?
posted by billsaysthis at 07:39 PM on February 03, 2004
Uh, sort of... You see, it makes it harder to catch a striker offsides when you have to have two players back there.
posted by StarFucker at 01:05 AM on February 04, 2004
This is such a stupid idea that I'm not even going to bother going into the reasons. Suffice to say that Mr Roberts should stick to reporting on some other sport.