The offside law has always been confusing to many football watchers, and over recent years there have been several subtle tweaks to the law to try to make to the game more exciting. These tweaks have generally been introduced to allow attackers to be given onside in situations where they may well have been given offside in the past.
As a former referee I have often smugly listened to TV pundits getting it wrong, in the belief that in the cold light of day those in the know can judge whether officials had got it wrong or not, and what the correct decision should have been. With VAR, there is even now an expectation that the correct decision will be arrived at immediately.
Anyone who saw the Liverpool v Spurs match the other day know that such a hope is way off!
The ball was passed to Kane, who was clearly in an offside position. Kane then won a penalty. However, the linesman has his flag up, and referee Moss runs over for a chat. Their conversation was close to a TV microphone and was recorded. The linesman is asking Moss whether Liverpool defender Lovren has diverted the Spurs pass to Kane, the point being that if he has done so deliberately, then Kane should not be given offside. The referee obviously hasn’t seen a deliberate pass by the defender, otherwise he would have said so, and he cannot confirm what the linesman thinks he may or may not have seen. He hasn’t got a clue. In my opinion Moss should logically then have said to the linesman that he hadn’t seen a deliberate pass, the linesman should then have said that in that case Kane is offside, and there should have been a free-kick to Liverpool rather than a penalty to Spurs. But he didn’t. He gave the penalty, and by the way, he also tried to ask the 4th official if he had seen anything on the TV replay despite the fact that VAR was not in use. The referee has made a right mess of it, but hey, that’s football, and sometimes the officials get decisions wrong when they only have seconds to decide. Been there. Got the t-shirt.
After the match we had the usual inconclusive amateur analysis. The TV pundits on MOTD hadn’t really got a clue. Klopp thought it was a shocking decision, Pochettino a brilliant one, typical of managers seeing things from their blinkered point-of-view.
But what should the correct decision have been? To my mind, whether Lovren had touched the ball, deliberately or not, is irrelevant. Kane was in an offside position when the ball was passed forward by his Spurs team-mate, and the linesman should have given him offside. End of story.
Or not…. The PGMOL (Professional Game Match Officials Limited) have released a statement saying that “The interpretation of “deliberately” kicking a ball considers whether a player has intentionally tried to kick a ball – it does not consider whether the ball ends up where a player may have wanted to kick it.” , and are implying that the officials made the correct decision on the day. So I have got it wrong. For me, if we are going to call a sliced clearance deliberate, then we will need to look at redefining defender to goalkeeper deflections as deliberate back-passes.
But wait, former top referee Mark Clattenburg agrees 100% with my version. So I was right. Who knows? Just don’t expect VAR to clear it all up when referees cannot agree what it right and wrong when they have hours to look at the replays.