Interpretational changes to Law 11

In the "UEFA/FIFA RAP course 2016" it was explained that the interpretation of Law 11 has changed again. The reason being that the football community feels that the former (new) interpretation does not meet the "Spirit of the Game".

The following examples and reasons are based on our understanding of how UEFA/FIFA want the offside situations to be interpreted. This is based on many examples we have seeing directly from UEFA. These are situations where an offside decision in some cases is in alignment with the "The Spirit of the Law". The changes are made due to the feedback from the IFAB advisory boards.

Hopefully these changes will be the last we see for now. It has been a difficult 3 years for the referees, the players and the spectators. It might be good to keep it simple from now on.

Video examples

1. When the defender (being close to the goal) plays the ball to prevent it from going to an attacker (who is close to the defender and in an offside position) then it will be regarded as an offside offence. Goals and own-goals achieved this way are not in alignement with the Spirit of the Law.

   The following video has 8 situations.
- videos 1-4 (0.00-0.50) are offside offences
- videos 5-8 (0.50-1.30) are NOT offside offences

2. When an attacker comes from an offside position and challenges the defender shortlu after the defender has taken the ball under his control then it will be regarded as an offside offence - the attacker gains an unfair advantage by coming from an offside position (this is not in alignement with the Spirit of the Law).

If the defender does not take the ball under his control, but plays the ball to somewhere else and is not challenged by the attacker while playing, then the attacker is NOT regarded to have gained an advantage.

In our opinion this mean that the examples in this video are:
0.00 - NOT offside
0.18 - unclear   (by the Spirit of the Law this rather seems to be offside for us)
0.30, 0.37 & 0.43 - OFFSIDE offences

3. Situations like this are reported to remain the same - "no offside" as the ball was played to the attacker by the defender and these are regarded to be 2 different situations.

Offside Explained was created to understand and explain the changes of 2013, then the changes of 2014, then the changes of 2015 and now we must change again. A lot of the interpretational part will be history once again.

We hope that the benefits of the "Information" and "Judgement" topics and the database of 500 videos have still served as a learning tool and maybe someday IFAB will want to use them to create an official educational platform for the referees.