Humans simply cannot be in charge of offside decisions, we're not able to get offsides correct in a timely and reliable manner. 100 years of humans trying to get offsides correct reliably and quickly it's just not going to happen is it.
Var has been in place for 3 years I think? It doesn't seem like the PL has tweaked it, tried to make it better, introduce any kind of new tech, other than to this season say 'sorry' a few more times.
Why VARs are using them ridiculous lines to try and figure out an offside is beyond me.
Give AI almost all decisions except for fouls, leave that to an on field ref
Handballs? This will be harsh at first but if the ball touches the players arm below the shoulder it's a handball, the exception being only if a player purposely puts their hands behind their backs. May result in higher scoring games for a while, but everyone will get used to it.
Offsides. Why cant stadiums have sensors alongside all sides of the pitch, a sensor in the ball, some kind of sensors on the players shoulders waist knees boots and just leave it to the tech to calculate when someone is offside?
We're all happy to have advertisements and TV crews and microphones alongside the pitch, so bring in offside tech too. If tech can be used to determine goal line decisions 10 years ago or whenever it was, surely by now the tech is there for offsides, just seems like a matter of will to me.
Has anyone seen Real Madrid's new retractable pitch, and where it is stored?
If there's a will there's a way.
Technology is amazing these days, do we not have technology that can determine all this without a human being?
Just leave the fouls to an on field ref who has a replay monitor on the side of the pitch.
The human eye is not enough for objective parts of the game, even with three of them sitting in a studio watching replays.
Subjective things like fouls then humans are always gonna be better at deciding than tech. The ball being out of play or offside is objective and can't be too difficult for tech to work out in a second or two
Onfield ref & VAI
posted on 6/11/23
comment by Gearing up for the Cycle to Start Again! (U17162)
posted 4 hours, 30 minutes ago
comment by Sat Nav (U18243)
posted 9 minutes ago
Replacing one set of imperfections with another
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I'm all for trying new things if the current one isn't working!
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Thats how we ended up with VAR
posted on 6/11/23
Get rid of offside altogether
Amend the handball rule -Ball to hand is not a penalty
posted on 6/11/23
comment by it'sonlyagame (U6426)
posted 8 hours, 6 minutes ago
More seriously though, offsides should be determined in the same way as when the ball crosses a line.
The player needs to have crossed the offside line entirely, not just by the tip of a boot, shoulder, or whatever body part.
As regards contact with the ball, both the first frame showing contact and the first frame showing the ball leaving the foot of the passer should be considered.
The offending player needs to be offside in both of those frames or he is adjudged to be onside.
It always used to be said that unless it was 100% clear cut, the attacking player should be given the benefit of the doubt. The principles set out above would ensure that principle is observed.
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There are repercussions you haven't considered. You only conversion the attacking team. This would change the game for the defending team massively. They may as well stop practicing offside traps in training. Defenders would find it safer to just stay behind the last man because playing the offside trap suddenly becomes a much much bigger risk. It would literally change the game.
Offside must be offside, plain and simple. It doesn't work any other way if you think about it.
I watch LaLiga and Serie A and they have these 3D silhouettes that make offside a breeze. Meanwhile in England, we are still drawing lines. Why?
posted on 6/11/23
comment by Sheriff JW Pepper (U1007)
posted 3 hours, 20 minutes ago
comment by Gearing up for the Cycle to Start Again! (U17162)
posted 4 hours, 30 minutes ago
comment by Sat Nav (U18243)
posted 9 minutes ago
Replacing one set of imperfections with another
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I'm all for trying new things if the current one isn't working!
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Thats how we ended up with VAR
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And nets, subtitutes, and yellow and red cards.
posted on 6/11/23
comment by K7-0ptimus Primal (U1282)
posted 29 minutes ago
comment by it'sonlyagame (U6426)
posted 8 hours, 6 minutes ago
More seriously though, offsides should be determined in the same way as when the ball crosses a line.
The player needs to have crossed the offside line entirely, not just by the tip of a boot, shoulder, or whatever body part.
As regards contact with the ball, both the first frame showing contact and the first frame showing the ball leaving the foot of the passer should be considered.
The offending player needs to be offside in both of those frames or he is adjudged to be onside.
It always used to be said that unless it was 100% clear cut, the attacking player should be given the benefit of the doubt. The principles set out above would ensure that principle is observed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
There are repercussions you haven't considered. You only conversion the attacking team. This would change the game for the defending team massively. They may as well stop practicing offside traps in training. Defenders would find it safer to just stay behind the last man because playing the offside trap suddenly becomes a much much bigger risk. It would literally change the game.
Offside must be offside, plain and simple. It doesn't work any other way if you think about it.
I watch LaLiga and Serie A and they have these 3D silhouettes that make offside a breeze. Meanwhile in England, we are still drawing lines. Why?
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You're speaking as if you'd never watched football before VAR. Error margins were waaaay bigger then, but teams would still do offside drills.
Most current offside decisions don't even require VAR either. It's only a minority that need a review, and the tighter ones in the pre-VAR days were pretty much a coin toss anyway.
When it comes to offside, VAR was considered a development that could avoid the typical instances where goals were ruled out when players were miles onside, or goals that stood when the circumstances were the opposite.
I don't think anyone expected or wanted this to be judged down to the smallest possible micron or pixel, much less so when the technology isn't in place to determine with certainty when exactly contact was made with the ball, or which the players' exact positions were relative to the lines on the pitch and to each other, and whatever pther variables might determine whether a player is fully offside or not.
posted on 6/11/23
You're speaking as if you'd never watched football before VAR. Error margins were waaaay bigger then, but teams would still do offside drills.
====
Error margins were bigger because of human error. Offside has always been offside.
posted on 6/11/23
Yes, but there was no way of measuring whether a player was 1mm offside, which is why officials were always instructed to err on the side of caution and not flag for offside unless completely sure.
Even then, there'd be instances where a player might be a good yard offside and not get flagged - or others where a player who timed his run well enough was a couple of yards on side but was given off.
Those were the ones I would say most people wanted to see stamped out.
Interestingly enough, the benefit of the doubt was also called upon in the case of penalties, though in those cases refs were told they had to be totally sure a foul had been committed (inside the box) in order to award a penalty.
posted on 6/11/23
All that is fine tbh, but offside must remain offside. Subjectivity cannot be done away with. Otherwise you change the game more than you think.
posted on 7/11/23
I'm not saying scrap offside, Mamba. I'm saying do it more reasonably. It's not like the offside rule hasn't changed over time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offside_(association_football)#History
The benefit of the doubt principle is akin to the legal notion of burden of proof - the theory being that in order to penalise a player, the officials need to have a reasonable degree of certainty that the rule is being broken.
The potential 'law-breaker' here is the attacking player. That's why it's him, and not the defender, that gets the benefit of the doubt in potential offsides. In penalties it's supposed to work the other way, because it's the defender who would potentially be breaking the rules and getting penalised.
Based on the above, it's wrong to give a player offside by half an inch when the combination of variables being considered could be off by more than that. That's the reason for suggesting a form of measurement that observes a reasonable limit of certainty.
It's only actually been the advent of VAR that's allowed for the millimetrical measuring of offside, but its current implementation is based on the flawed and misguided notion that the variables are established with ultimate precision.
The actual fact is that they aren't. There's a margin of error, and they're acting as if there wasn't.
The VAR systems used in Italy and Spain, like the one at the World Cup, still require human input. There's a reason FIFA calls it "semi-automated".
posted on 7/11/23
Take a player sprinting at a reasonable 8 m/s. (Fyg, that's 28.8 kmh, when the fastest PL players have been clocked doing over 37 kmh).
That's 800cm per second, or 8 cm for every hundredth of a second.
Premier League broadcast footage is 50 frames per second, as per the PL itself:
https://www.premierleague.com/news/1488423
That means the margin of error is 16cm - or more than 6 inches - just for establishing 'point of contact' alone.
Yet for the purpose of their calculations, the reference point being taken for offside is the most disadvantageous to the attacking player.
In other words, it's an incontrovertible fact that they're removing any possible benefit of the doubt and, as a consequence, are wrongly penalising attacking players and ruling out goals scored from onside positions.