Samuel Chukwueze was denied two goals by a matter of millimetres during yesterday’s 3-3 draw against Sassuolo, sparking discussions about the offside rule.
Chukwueze had the ball in the net twice at the Mapei Stadium and both times VAR intervened to call them offside, though the stills from the technology suggested there was very little in both calls.
As La Gazzetta dello Sport writes, the idea behind the introduction of the ‘semi-automatic offside’ was that it would remove all doubt and subjectivity, removing any element of debate because of the technology available.
The two goals disallowed for Chukwueze generated an ocean of controversy on social media, especially over the second goal. These discussions remain ongoing because ultimately Milan did not win, too.
Remembering that hands and arms (but the upper part of the shoulder counts) are not counted as extremities punishable for offside, the so-called concept of there being a gap between the forward and the last defender – loudly requested for years by Arséne Wenger – is back in fashion.
In this case the offside will only be such if there is a clear separation between the attacker and the defender: that segment between one player and the other creates the so-called light distance. It’s always a question of centimetres, of course, however you decide how to look at it.
The fact remains that even in the last meeting, the Ifab (the government that supervises the rules of football) discussed the topic of light. The experiments continue, in England in the minor leagues and also in the Italy U18 league.
A final decision regarding the ‘Wenger motion’ will probably be made at the meeting in February 2025. Until then the experiments continue, and the Rossoneri must accept the decisions made.
It’s an easy fix in the rule change. You add a few centimeters as a “tolerance”. You add say 5cm, so if you are 4cm, you are fine, but at 6cm you get called offside. That way, players can use the same point of reference and then be given slack for when it’s just super close.
There’s no real difference in the rule though, that’s the point you just moved up the line 5 cm but there’s still going to be these close calls, no matter where you put the line. That’s the issue
No, because you are using the same point of reference. When you are offside, it’s not by 1cm but at least 6.
As a player, you can’t tell when you’re super close, but if you have a tolerance, you’re considering the fact that they are not robots.
If they go with this “Wenger motion” the advantage will shift decidedly in favor of attackers. Imagine having to catch up to lightening quick forwards when they’re already basically a step behind you. They should just figure better tech to determine the calls.
Wenger’s motion just shifts the problem. We’ll be having the same debates.
Strictly from entertainment value, which there’s a lot of focus on, more goals creates more entertainment. So creating a revised offside rule would go with that narrative and create more goals.
As it is, it has become difficult for defenders to actually defend.
The technology works 99% of the time. This was one of the 1%
I disagree. More often than not VAR creates more confusion than clarity.
Agree computer works in 1s and 0s so there is no close call for a computer you are either offside or not. It’s either a goal or not, it’s either out or no. I am a Milan fan and this situation annoyed me however it’s hard to complain against 1s and 0s
That’s fine.
There are many many marginal offisde calls that I’ve seen VAR get correct. It’s waaaay more than the ones they get incorrect. It’s just that the negative ones get highlighted while the ones which it gets correct doesn’t show up in media articles
The issue concerns following this to the “Letter of the Law” or the “Spirit of the Law”.
The letter is what we are following. The spirit, or reason for the law in the first place, is to ensure no unfair advantage against the defending team.
In these cases, we are talking a split second from the ball leaving the foot of the attacking team’s player, and if the “minute body part is giving an advantage”. I don’t believe it is, especially when it is an “attacker’s shoulder bone 1cm ahead of the defender’s shoulder bone” as they run towards goal.
We all know this doesn’t feel right, even if you followed the defending team in the situation. And it robs the teams of celebrating sometimes as well, which defeats the entire reason we even watch this game to begin with.
That’s a beautifully crafted comment. Kudos
Takes away from the entertainment value. 100%
I pretty much prefer the rule that says that things like arms and hands are not adjudged to be giving you any advantage, so having these protrude should not be ruled off side. Anything else becomes too technical and leaves it open to debate and interpretation. I am still interested in why the Lukaku attack was allowed resulting in the corner kick.
This is a useless discussion.
No matter where you put the line or how big tolerance you give, it’s going to have to be a hard line to avoid interpretation, so there are still going to be calls where someone is offside by a fraction of a centimeter.
Moving the line will allow more goal, which probabli is a good thing, but it will not prevent contentious calls like this.
I’m not sure you get the idea of tolerance. Think of it the same way you are driving over the limit. Usually, you have (at least where I live) 5% tolerance because it’s impossible to drive at the exact limit even with cruise control.
The same thing would apply here. Instead of a percentage, you have a distance which is a “margin of error” because the player is human. These calls are hard to determine with a still image, let alone when moving in the heat for 70 minutes. That’s what I mean by tolerance. You don’t have a hard line because you have a margin of error.
And yes, we as fans won’t change the game, but it’s an interesting discussion nonetheless.
Line is a line. doesn’t matter if you draw it 5cm to the left or to the right. It’s still either on or off. Thin margins and offsides by a toenail will remain an isuue.
It’s a solution that does not address the problem.
Unless you mean a tolerance without hard definition of how much it is, then it’s an entirely different can of worms.
I think it does solve the issue because it at least pushes the point where VAR intervenes to a margin that is obvious to the human eye. Instead of flagging offside situations where a reasonable person looks at and thinks the attacker is level and not in front of the defender.
I have a very different feeling about this. Currently it is clearly visible wheter someone is off or onside. Good luck determining with a naked eye whether someone is 9cm or 11cm behind the defender. Even with technology this is doubious and will generate even more contested decisions. That’s on top of what I said before – toenail offsides will still be a thing and people will argue if we should maybe push the line from 10cm to 15 cm, or maybe to 7cm.
This is not solving anything, just makes it more complicated and ambigous.
The technology would determine if it is 9 or 10 cm offside though. Not the naked eye. You just moving the point forward for the technology to intervene. Not sure if you are a cricket fan but a similar thing happens with their decisions around LBW. Rather than just going with if the ball would have just clipped the stumps or not does not completely overturn the decision. They go with an on field decision (human) and do not change that unless the technology shows it was significantly incorrect. I.e. Unless more that 30% of the ball was hitting the stumps they won’t reverse the decision to change and out or not out call.
I think offside could work a similar way with VAR. Relying first on an on field call. And then only changing it if the VAR shows that the player offside is above a certain margin. But if the player was ruled offside on field but the VAR shows they were onside; then always change the decision. Much like if the ball is showing to have been missing the stumps when someone is given out.
Apologies to those who don’t follow cricket and don’t know what I’m talking about.
I dont know cricket, but seems like the example you’re using is “would something happen” (?) If it’s a projection, then it’s not accurate measurement. Much like the other example (by Mats) with sppeding. The technology there is not accurate, hence 5% tolerance is needed. Tolerance is there to account for imperfect measurement. That does not apply to offside, which is somethiing that clearly did or did not happen and we can determine that pretty accurately.
Anyway, just think about a scenario where Milan looses a goal and then video is released from var with Hakan being offside by 9cm, so the goal stood, because he was within the margin. 10x more controvercy and criticism than today. IMO it just create more problems, and doesnt solve the original issue. People will still get pissed when their goal gets disallowed by a fragment of a sleeve.
“Good luck determining with a naked eye whether someone is 9cm or 11cm behind the defender.”
THAT IS THE POINT !
You are not supposed to use the tolerance line, but player, as it is today. It’s a margin of error.
When you are driving on a highway where the limit is 100km/h, and you know that there is a 5% “tolerance” for speeding, you try to drive at 100, not 105.
The same applies here. If you are caught offside by 1cm over a tolerance line, which is at 5cm, you aren’t 1cm over the line, you are 6cm offside.
you keep missing the point
Dude you need to understand the difference between a hard line and a line with a margin of error. If you can’t… I can’t help you.
You’d need to help yourself first. Your’e playing with semantics and are immune to logic. Margin of error IS a hard line.
I suppose I’m in the minority for thinking both were offsides in real time. You gotta know where you are on the pitch.
Exactly, as good as he has been lately he should be more attentive about whether he is offsides. As a player you know when you’re pushing it too close. Some players have more goals canceled than actual goals because of the timing of their runs. Pretty sure Chuk isn’t one of those players, ik he is just hungry to score and both were close especially that second one.
So was Lukaku when he go the corner which led to the goal 🙂 And that was all good and dandy.
I don’t like VAR being used this much. it takes away from the fun/excitement and celebration of goals for the players and the fans. We should have very limited VAR usage (can be debated how limited) and go back to Asst Referees calling offside w/ the naked eye. VAR can be in place for a manager who can choose to use a limited number of challenges (like NFL) if he thinks that the person was clearly offside. Then VAR can be used and can be overturned but only if the assistant referee was clearly wrong (i.e., the guy was offside by some minimum amount — 6cm? 10cm? whatever.). This way, when people score, we can celebrate with much more confidence. Now all celebrations are muted and then when VAR confirms a goal, it’s anticlimactic. VAR could still be used exactly the same for reviewing red card situations and goal line technology can also continue to be used.
That’s an interesting take…..the challenges. It would have meant 0-0 going to Roma for the second leg of Pioli used a challenge there.
But yea overall, hadn’t thought of it but but a great suggestion imo
I like a lot of these points. I think challenges like in NFL or tennis can be a good addition to the game.
In terms of offsides, I think we could have like you said a minimum amount. Otherwise, you are treating players like computers.
I also agree with this suggestion. I think each team should have a amounted VAR reviews… more like the cricket sport. If a team feels a certain aspect in the match needs VAR, the team captain or Manager would approach the Referee for review
Would be so much easier if the line was drawn at the foot. Would open room for more goals as players or poachers would be able to lean in and get a good start. Those where the times when football was at it best
Penalties are decide on whether the foot making the foul was in the penalty box or not. Afterall this game is called football and played with the feet. So offsides should be called when the FOOT of the attacking player is offside. This stands to reason in my opinion.
This picture of the elbow being over the line is just the first goal. I still haven’t seen any angle of the second goal that shows any part of him being offsides. The second offsides was the truly scandalous call. Why nobody is talking about that one , I don’t know.
Agree 100%.
The first call was frustrating but was technically correct. I can live with that. There is a separate question of having a tolerance level so that very tight offsides that are not in the spirit of the game do not overrule goals that look legitimate.
However I’ve still not seen anything in the graphic for the second goal that suggests Chuk was anything other than perfectly level. I cannot understand how the VAR officials could see that as sufficient evidence to rule out a goal.
you can change the rules any way you want and it will make no difference as long as you have a human component having the final decision. They have 4-5 “qualified” referees in a VAR room, 2 linesman and a Referee. They still somehow manage to get decisons wrong for certain teams and pass a blind eye to other teams, this is not a technology problem but human interferance problem. There is something very shady to the league and the referee association and it is only getting amplified each season it seems.
What I find even more frustrating is the linesmen waiting to raise the flag on clear offsides allowing the play to continue. This is done why exactly?
If they raise it and they are wrong on VAR they will have prevented a goal? Why do we even need refs on the sides? Why not just have real-time VAR on the monitors in the stadiums?
Ifab constantly does stupid sh!t then makes changes to the game simply to justify it existing… Idiotic. Blue cards? Seriously?
Lukaku was offside but Roma got a corner that lead to their only goal against us. Then the replay showed Abraham handsball but no PK for us.
Meanwhile. Chuk hand was in line with Sassuolo players and he got an offside.
What’s the point for VAR if it only add more problems?!
“What’s the point for VAR if it only add more problems?!”
To give more power to the refs to decide the outcome of the matches. And they did decide ages ago that Inter WILL win the scudetto this year. The refs are making sure that will happen.
That is BS, sorry, but Inter play more consistent football, so far have only 1 loss in serie A and deserve their title this year. Can’t blame our results on refs. Sometimes we get questionable decisions in our favor, sometimes against us, but almost always we lost points because we played below average against lower or even bottom-tier clubs.
Sure, they have played well but the refs have helped them plenty – there’s no denying that fact. Inter even won two matches in a row with the help as both winning goals should have been canceled as they fouled a player just seconds before the goals. And they were no minor offenses either (or does hitting the opponent’s face intentionally with elbow sound a thing that shouldn’t be punished?)
And I wasn’t complaining about the decisions made against Milan. In case you haven’t got a clue on what has been happening this season, just use google and see how many VAR decisions have favored Inter. And how many of them are just plain wrong decisions.
I guess my worries around VAR are what are the margins of error, because the graphs we are shown are not the exact exact reality, they are the best estimate based on several camera angles. So in my opinion unless it is a clear definite offside, VAR should not intervene. Anyway, in some cases we get points from such decisions, in some we lose, so in the long run it evens out.
On the other hand, I think the system should intervene for inaccurate decisions during gameplay. If we can see on replay literally 3 seconds later who touched the ball last or if there was a clear as sun foul play, offside, whatever, the system should notify immediately – with current technologies we should only need refs on field to maintain order on the field, lower the tensions.
It is so sad that All bad referring decisions have always being against Milan why, remember the muntaris goal against Juve that Buffon took from inside the net and several others over the years