Get rid of off-side rule - Marco van Basten

Hoof the ball

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It was fine before VAR. Referee's didn't make less mistakes, but there was way less controversy. If your team was on the receiving end of a poor offside call you were more likely to shrug it off and claim that "these things even themselves over the season anyway".

VAR brought controversy insofar as referees couldn't afford to make a single mistake without it being scrutinised. Pre-VAR, they made mistakes and they weren't scrutinised to this degree.

Just go back to regular offside rules with an implementation of "benefit" for the striker.
 

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Pace would become the most valuable asset in football. It would be fun
 

Mb194dc

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All too complicated, just tweaking the current offside law to give more advantage to the attacker will work as a good solution I think. The Wenger rule, might be a bit too extreme, just working offside on feet could also be an option. I would trial various offside line points for a season in different leagues to see what happened.

Pretty certain no offside would be a disaster of course. Would lead to teams goal hanging and hoofing the ball to players good at bringing the ball down / under control. Midfield would disappear as we currently know it. Don't think need 18 yard rule either, would also lead to teams leaving players at the line all game and hitting balls at them.

Would also say those other ideas in op should be trialled. IFAB should be much more cautious with changes though. By all means trial different ideas, if something seems to work, trial it more before rolling it out everywhere. Latest hand ball meddling has been a total shambles and they should learn from it.
 

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All too complicated, just tweaking the current offside law to give more advantage to the attacker will work as a good solution I think. The Wenger rule, might be a bit too extreme, just working offside on feet could also be an option. I would trial various offside line points for a season in different leagues to see what happened.

Pretty certain no offside would be a disaster of course. Would lead to teams goal hanging and hoofing the ball to players good at bringing the ball down / under control. Midfield would disappear as we currently know it. Don't think need 18 yard rule either, would also lead to teams leaving players at the line all game and hitting balls at them.
This would mean the end of the big CF as they all have big feet. Small lads with size 7s would rule.
 

Adam-Utd

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It would be awful IMO.

The only way no offsides works is on a smaller pitch, or small sided games.

We don't need to see 10 goals a game from goal hangers.
 

Bebestation

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This might be a bad guess -

But when we play 5vs5 football at GOALS it usually leads to scores like 13-9 doesn't it?

Whilst its obviously related to many things but the fact that no one cares about offside surely has an influence on the amount of goals scored?

Saying that - I kind of like the Chess aspect of football and its tactics where a match can seem quite slow yet the entertainment is more about what the manager chooses to do that what the players end up doing.
 

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I think you might have bolded the wrong bit and people will knee jerk into talking about goal hanging. What he actually says is:



I think his points are fair. Football does get compressed into 30-40 yards of a pitch when the actual pitch is 100 yards+. Having players more spread out would mean more dribbling / more exciting attacking play instead of having these tactical cagey affairs we seem to have these days.
I didn’t bold the wrong part. The bit in bold is what MvB said. The rest are my own words and thoughts.

I did see the point in copying and pasting the whole MvB article. It’s available on the Internet if people want to read it.
 

sullydnl

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The current offside rule is a big reason there are so many goals in modern football. It's a good thing

The main reason for all this sudden scrutiny is because people don't like seeing these narrow VAR offsides and that's something that will potentially be fixed within the next few years with semi-automated offsides anyway. So leave offsides be.
 

Redlyn

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How about keep offsides but change the rule to say that players can be offside ONLY if they are beyond the 18yard line?
Wouldn't it just create a lot of congestion on 18 yards line? 18 yard hanging. 3 defenders and 2-3 attackers just hanging around that area waiting for the throughball or ball over the top? Attackers live off the shoulder where ever it is.

Agreed. We need a better measurement.

Maybe the length of an average burrito?
How would that fix an issue of micro measurements? What if you are 1mm beyond an average burrito. It would still be offiside by a micro measure according to VAR.
 

rcoobc

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Nah, they'd sit just as deep. No point in sitting deeper and risk shots from a good distance.

They would however keep a striker close to the opponent's goal at all times. Which in return would force the attacking team to drop some defenders down. Which would create more space in the centre. So you're right that shit teams benefit from this rule, but in a different way.
Of course they would sit deeper.

Imagine Van Nistelrooy hanging at the edge of the goal area. How can you push your defence up? You can't.
 

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I’d like to see an end to designated goalkeepers. Any player can handle the ball in the area as long as they scream “in net” moments before.
 

rcoobc

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I wouldn't fancy being a defender (never have to be fair) if it was scrapped altogether, but the 18 yard rule sounds pretty good to me.

It opens up more space on the pitch, but not the whole pitch to encourage 'cheating'.
I ask this, if Van Nistelrooy stands on the edge of the 18 yard box, how can your defence push up?

So you keep at least two defenders back to mark RVN, and these defenders slowly degrade in football ability. They don't need to be good on the ball, that's not their job. They don't even need to be that fast. They just need to be hard and big and good at tackling.

In front of those defenders you might have a DM to block through balls, to block a number 10 or an attacking play maker. This is your first footballer who can actually play football.

It changes the whole game. Takes us back 100 years
 

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I’d like to see an end to designated goalkeepers. Any player can handle the ball in the area as long as they scream “in net” moments before.

I reckon every team should be forced to play two women players. One has to be a goalkeeper. We'd have NFL scores in no time.
 

Sandikan

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Surely no offside would encourage shit teams to defend even deeper.
Exactly this.
And that's the end of the thread.


As for Big Sam's boast that he could "easily" shutout another team for 90mins in training.
Shame he can't do it with WBA eh!
 

Teja

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I didn’t bold the wrong part. The bit in bold is what MvB said. The rest are my own words and thoughts.

I did see the point in copying and pasting the whole MvB article. It’s available on the Internet if people want to read it.
Ah okay nm then, I agree with what you're saying.
 

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MrMarcello

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I'd like to see a second ref added to matches. Would likely result in one on-field official often behind the play and seeing other aspects often missed.
 

duffer

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Would it be the attacking change akin to the backpass rule? How long did that take to adapt tactically?
I think it would be much more impactful than that.

When did the backpass rule come in, 30 years ago? If took years before clubs started using goalies who could use their feet. In fact teams playing it out from the back against a high press is fairly recent and wouldn't be a thing with the backpass rule.
 

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Surely no offside would encourage shit teams to defend even deeper.
You can only defend so deep. If you end up with your back four spread out along the six yard box then that creates space for someone to smash it in from 15 yards out. In hockey the first big change was strikers pushing up very high and very wide because that’s where the space was. There will be loads of other tactical tweaks to think about but none of them making the game any less entertaining than tactics based around repeatedly catching the opposition offside.
 

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Van Basten doesn’t have clue by the way. It would fecking ruin the game.
 

mdn1987

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Maybe go down the route of cricket, and give each team one/two review(s) per game (for any “big” decision ie offside goals, penalty calls, red card disputes etc)?

The captain has so many seconds to challenge the ref’s decision and, if they win, they keep their review. If not, they lose it.

Not 100% certain how they would implement it, but just a thought.
 

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Im happy someone has some idea but what there should be is a line saying you cant be offside past that line, named the offside line. It would act exactly like the half way line but slightly into their own half.
Like
----------- <- offside line team a
------------- < half way line
----------- offside line team b

team b can not be offside normally before the half way line, but what if it was the line in their own half instead?
 

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Wouldn't it just create a lot of congestion on 18 yards line? 18 yard hanging. 3 defenders and 2-3 attackers just hanging around that area waiting for the throughball or ball over the top? Attackers live off the shoulder where ever it is.
I think the defence would hold the line about 25/30 yards from goal and allow the attacker to occupy the 7/12 yards of space between them and the edge of the penalty area. The GK would have to be alert to any chipped balls over the top but it would be a difficult skill for the opposition players to pull off

The whole point of moving the line deeper though is to create more space in the middle. Remember BOTH defensive lines would have to go deeper, so you would have 60 yards in the middle to play in. Dribbling and running with the ball would become very important and I feel the game would get more end-to-end as a result
 

acnumber9

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You can only defend so deep. If you end up with your back four spread out along the six yard box then that creates space for someone to smash it in from 15 yards out. In hockey the first big change was strikers pushing up very high and very wide because that’s where the space was. There will be loads of other tactical tweaks to think about but none of them making the game any less entertaining than tactics based around repeatedly catching the opposition offside.
I’m not sure. I certainly don’t see it opening up those kind of teams. You’d rather take your chances that somebody scores from range than leaving space behind you.
 

youngrell

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I ask this, if Van Nistelrooy stands on the edge of the 18 yard box, how can your defence push up?

So you keep at least two defenders back to mark RVN, and these defenders slowly degrade in football ability. They don't need to be good on the ball, that's not their job. They don't even need to be that fast. They just need to be hard and big and good at tackling.

In front of those defenders you might have a DM to block through balls, to block a number 10 or an attacking play maker. This is your first footballer who can actually play football.

It changes the whole game. Takes us back 100 years
Why do you assume that a striker would be static on 18 yards? Just because he can?

And if so, it opens up a terrific amount of space for the midfield which should mean more movement and ball carrying.

Do you ever play small sided games, like 5 or 7 a side? Does anyone really goal hang then? And are long balls effective or the go to choice of pass? Not in my experience.

I don’t think it would be as bad as you think. Or maybe it will, who knows. I would like to see a trial to find out.
 

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Why not just change it so that an attacker has to be fully beyond the last defender for it to be offside, the whole body. None of that “his toenail was beyond the last defender” nonsense.
 

Morty_

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I’d like to see an end to designated goalkeepers. Any player can handle the ball in the area as long as they scream “in net” moments before.
Suarez approves of this message.
 

Synco

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Would maybe trigger the return of the defensive sweeper?
 

Zlatan 7

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Why do you assume that a striker would be static on 18 yards? Just because he can?

And if so, it opens up a terrific amount of space for the midfield which should mean more movement and ball carrying.

Do you ever play small sided games, like 5 or 7 a side? Does anyone really goal hang then? And are long balls effective or the go to choice of pass? Not in my experience.

I don’t think it would be as bad as you think. Or maybe it will, who knows. I would like to see a trial to find out.
I think the bolded is just due to the spirit of the game in my experience, we may not play offsides but everyone knows you can’t just go goal hanging as it’d be pretty shitty.

I personally think no offsides would change the game drastically. The forward would have to stay up near the 18yard line, not static but hovering there, why not if he’s allowed there leaving only the keeper to beat, he’d have to take advantage of that. A defender or two would need to stay with him, which would lead to problems like a poster above mentioned with regards to different skills becoming needed for new roles.
 

rcoobc

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Why do you assume that a striker would be static on 18 yards? Just because he can?

And if so, it opens up a terrific amount of space for the midfield which should mean more movement and ball carrying.

Do you ever play small sided games, like 5 or 7 a side? Does anyone really goal hang then? And are long balls effective or the go to choice of pass? Not in my experience.

I don’t think it would be as bad as you think. Or maybe it will, who knows. I would like to see a trial to find out.
Funnily enough for a few years I played 3 aside with my mates quite regularly. We had no goalies, small goals but we *did* have an outside rule.

Some of the most fun I've had playing football.

Regarding your no offside in 5 aside games, it's a good point, but 5 aside is much smaller. Your defence and attack are much closer together. In 11 aside there is a big distance between attack and defence which will be streched further by removing offside.

I dunno man. All got trying it but don't really want it to catch on
 
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Is this even true though? Or just an assumption?
Have you ever participated in football on an 11 a side so pitch with no offsides often?

I have. Defenders sit in the box to avoid goal hanging. I assure you it would never make for good viewing in pro football. At most they'd be resultantly acres of space in midfield. But the boxes would be full of attrition.