As I’m settling in to watch some more fabulous Champions League soccer tonight (and for those of you who know what I’m talking about, if you have a chance to see replays of yesterday’s Arsenal-Olympiakos and/or Barcelona-Kiev games, don’t pass it up; spectacular stuff, that) it occurs to me that nothing about soccer is more extraordinary, or goes further to define the difference between America’s sports (American football, baseball, basketball) and the Rest of the World’s Sport, than this: in a good healthy weekend’s dose of soccer-watching (say, 3 or 4 games), you will see, guaranteed, anywhere from a half-dozen to twenty incorrect offside calls. Not “possibly wrong” or “arguably wrong,” or “judgment-call wrong” — just wrong, plain and simple, as shown on the slow-motion replays. A study published in Nature several years ago confirmed what every soccer fan knows – the linesmen get a lot (around 20%) of the offside calls wrong.
Now, for those of you who don’t watch a lot of soccer, the interesting thing about that fact is this: this is not at all like, say, a blown “offside” call in American football, or a blown call at 2d base in baseball. Offside calls are very, very often game-changing (and you can easily have a game with 4 or 5 potentially game-changing blown calls). The offside flag, as often as not, takes away a clear goal-scoring chance, frequently a spectacular goal-scoring chance, from the attacking team, in a game in which one or two goals almost always is the margin of victory. It’s as though football referees routinely blew 20% of field goal calls, or baseball umpires routinely screwed up 20% of home run calls.
And the really extraordinary thing is: it’s not going to get fixed anytime soon, or ever. Nobody is proposing video replay for offside calls, and soccer fans would revolt around the world if they did. Not that we like all these mistakes, exactly — we yell and scream and moan about lousy offside calls all the time. But in a very strange way that I only vaguely understand, that’s kind of the point, and it makes us love the game even more than we otherwise would. It’s just a part of the game, like random bad bounces and slips on wet turf and the sun in your eyes and other random factors that bear on who wins and who loses. Outrageously bad calls are part of the game — it gives you something to yell and scream about (which is, after all, the whole point of the enterprise, no?).
This, I realize, is simply inconceivable to most American sports fans. The whole point of having referees is to “get it right” – it seems obvious — and so we’ll do whatever it takes (including having — what, 8 referees or so on the field at once!) Nothing is more hilarious to those of us who love soccer than to see the kerfuffle that ensues in American football when the referees stop the game to decide whether or not the quarterback’s knee touched the ground milliseconds before the ball squiggled lose from his grip, or not.
I think if you could really put your finger on what this is all telling us about the world, you’d know something valuable.
geokstr says:
Soccer!!!
What’s that?? Do they play it in Green Bay?
September 30, 2009, 12:19 pmTeh Anonymous says:
Now we just need to combine this with the “ESPN mentality” post of a few days ago.
Somewhat more seriously, maybe the tendency to think the other side is off-the-wall crazy is tied to the idea that something is objectively right, and that it’s important to know what it is, even in sports.
September 30, 2009, 12:27 pmHouston Lawyer says:
This is also why the soccer refs even here in the US have to get a police escort from the locker room to the field.
September 30, 2009, 12:31 pmTNeloms says:
I don’t think this is true in all cases. In baseball, umpiring of balls and strikes has been an issue for a while now. There are computer systems that are more accurate than the umpires, yet there is a very large resistance by both the umpires and the fans to having a machine call balls and strikes, even though they can often dictate the outcome of a game. It’s the same mentality that you mention — how an umpire “calls the game” is part of the game.
I personally find it ridiculous. Many umpires have even complained about “being on Questec” on certain nights, saying that it affects their judgment. Presumably the way it affects their judgment is that it makes them be more accurate, but they still repeat this nonsense complaint. I don’t see why umpires can’t wait a millisecond for a definite computerized ball/strike call (and repeats that call himself), and if the computer says it’s borderline then the umpire makes the call. That preserves the human aspect of it while also being much more accurate.
September 30, 2009, 12:32 pmTony says:
8 refs on the field at once? In what unbeknownst-to-me American sport does that occur?
September 30, 2009, 12:33 pmTMK75 says:
Another self-important post from a soccer fan who considers his sport superior to those awful, barbaric American traditions like football.
Really professor, I expect better from you…
September 30, 2009, 12:33 pmSteve Lubet says:
At most, it tells us something about the difference between soccer and American football. One sport is amenable to instant replay and the other is not. There are also plenty of blown calls in basketball — missed fouls, three second violations, traveling — with no likelihood of replay in the foreseeable future. I don’t think anyone would try to draw any larger lessons, however, other than to say that basketball and soccer move too quickly for instant replay.
September 30, 2009, 12:46 pmDS says:
Very interesting post. This reminded me of Michael Madison’s interesting post about the differences between basketball and soccer officiating over at concurringopinions, here.
My 2 cents: I disagree with your equation of an offside call to a home run or field goal call. They are similarly objective, but offsides is just a more difficult decision. The speed of the play to be officiated and the need to examine whether any defender (even if he is on the opposite width of the field) played the attacker onsides is a highly demanding task for a human pair of eyes.
I liken the offside call to a foul call in basketball. There is an objective rule for what constitutes a foul, but fans implicitly realize that (1) it is demanding for officials to call every foul or non-foul correctly; and (2) foul calls generally even out over the course of a game because there will be a similar quantity of bad and good calls for both teams.
It seems like the most outrage in American sports and soccer occurs when an official incorrectly rules on a scoring opportunity which requires pure objectivity, e.g. whether a football crosses the goalline, the basketball was released before time expired, the tennis ball is in or out, or the entire soccer ball crossed the goalline. Incorrect rulings on these plays have been the impetus for video review. So, while you’re right that no one is calling for video review of offsides calls, fans are calling for video review of goals (particularly after the Chelsea – Liverpool Championship).
In the end, I think what this tells us about the world is that while Americans and non-Americans may prefer different sports, we’re just not that different in our expectations of the officiating. Rational fans accept that officials have to make difficult decisions which are often incorrect. However, when officials make incorrect decisions about purely objective and definitive scoring opportunities and technology is available to provide some determinative oversight, fans will push for applying that technology in limited circumstances.
Great post!
September 30, 2009, 12:48 pmAK says:
Soccer is great (in part) because the officials blow huge, game-changing plays all the time? And soccer fans don’t see a meaningful difference between a bad call that affects a play and environmental conditions that affect a play?
If David Post doesn’t want people posting “soccer sucks,” then he should stop posting examples of why soccer sucks.
I have no control over whether people want to post “soccer sucks,” and I really don’t care that much whether you think it sucks. It doesn’t — but if you’re missing that, it’s really no skin off my nose. If you think American football is better, good for you — I’m told millions of people watch “Dancing with the Stars,” too. DGP
September 30, 2009, 12:50 pmbyomtov says:
That sounds right. Drawing deep conclusions from all this strikes me as a serious stretch.
September 30, 2009, 12:50 pmTerrivus says:
Nothing is more hilarious to those of us who love soccer than to see the kerfuffle that ensues in American football when the referees stop the game to decide whether or not the quarterback’s knee touched the ground milliseconds before the ball squiggled lose from his grip, or not.
There are a lot of faulty premises in your argument. Here are just three:
1. “[S]top the game”? The game is already stopped. Which is one reason why it’s not as big a deal in football to have instant replay as compared to soccer. There are lots of stoppages of time, and adding on a couple more minutes to one is no big deal.
2. In the same vein, it’s my understanding that instant replay in football does NOT apply to penalties. If your team gets called for offsides, or holding, or pass interference (the latter two of which can be just as pivotal as an offsides call is soccer)–or if there was no call–you’re out of luck. So there’s really no difference between football and soccer on this one.
3. There are far more “discrete” instances where instant replay matters in American football than soccer.
In football, it could be: Did the ball make it over the goal line? Did the ball cross the first-down marker? Was the running back’s knee down before the ball crossed the goal line? Were the receivers feet in bounds at the edge of the end zone? Was the quarterback’s arm moving forward when he was hit, making it an incomplete pass rather than a fumble? Whereas in soccer, there’s basically one: did the ball cross into the goal? (And maybe, considerably more minor: did the ball cross the out-of-bounds line?). I doubt there would be as much “furor” over instant reply in that situation, aside from the usual rioting by soccer fans. (Note, too, that instant reply in baseball and hockey only applies to these “discrete” situations–was it a home run, or not? Did the puck break the goal line, or not?)
By the way, they use instant replay and computerized line-calling (for serves) in tennis, including international tennis. And yet the fans in that sport don’t get all riled up about it. They probably use all sorts of instant replay in F1, another heavily international sport, as well, to impose penalties and such. Might this suggest that it’s soccer fans who are the exception, and not the other way around, as you snidely suggest? (Said condescension being par for the course for the average soccer fan, I might add.)
September 30, 2009, 12:51 pmCato The Elder says:
I venture if you took a survey or a poll of some kind, you would find plenty of people who watch or attend NBA or NFL events individually. When many of us watch those sports, it is often to marvel at the superlative athletic abilities of a particular player on a particular team. Think Lebron James, Kevin Garnett, Ladanian Tomlinson or Peyton Manning. That doesn’t often require others to share in the spectacle.
But soccer isn’t like that, I think. I can’t muster up any emotional investment when watching a soccer game without family or friends present. When you watch the World Cup on television, you notice how much of the spectatorship is simply expressing some sort of nationalist sentiment or pride. I think that quality is also present much the same way in baseball; while I personally find the sport incredibly boring, I have never been tied to a major market team with some real history like friends who do not have. In this way these sports are more intensely social in their spectating than their flashier brethren. The referee inaccuracy you’re describing here I think adds to that; it gives people a topic to bond over or alternatively, angst over. Machine infallibility diminishes that camaraderie by removing the “what if?” factor that future memorable arguments and epic fights* are often premised on.
* – Tush, there is some degree of hooliganism ingrained within us all.
September 30, 2009, 12:51 pmBob Montgomery says:
In playoff baseball they have 6 umpires on the field; during the regular season they use 4.
In football they use 7 referees.
Basketball has 3 referees plus table officials.
Ice hockey uses 3 or 4.
September 30, 2009, 12:53 pmDuffy Pratt says:
Because America is such a legalistic society, it tends to follow that are sports are more legalistic. And football, which is now the most popular and probably the most “American” of sports, is also the most legalistic. Americans are likely to be familiar with the ideas of appealability and reviewability, because of the replay rules. Likewise, Americans are now much more familiar with standards of review — to be overturned a replay must show “indisputable” video evidence that the play was wrong.
I’m still hoping that the NFL will institute appelate review for NFL games: a night time show where each team gets to raise on appeal certain officiating errors made during the game. The appelate judges will review these plays, determine whether they were errors, and then finally decide what effect the errors might or might not have had, and adjust teams records accordingly. The ratings would be through the roof. And the show would probably be alot more fun than your average game.
Soccer could never have anything like that. And the blown offsides calls don’t bother me. Of course, American’s would like the game much better if there simply were no offsides rule. What bothers me more in soccer is the insane “selling” of “fouls” every time there is the slightest bit of contact (or even phantom contact). They go way beyond the average NBA flopper (and come to think of it, the best NBA floppers are Europeans — coincidence?)
September 30, 2009, 12:54 pmAndy McGill says:
If soccer is going to use instant replay, it should first use it to weed out all the fake flops trying to draw the referees whistle. There must be 20 of those every match.
September 30, 2009, 1:02 pmBob White says:
The arbitrary and capricious nature of soccer refereeing is, I believe, one important reason it will never be that popular in the US. My complaints generally resolve around PKs and fouls near the box, but the pervasiveness and lack of interest in eliminating incorrect offside calls, which would be technologically fairly trivial, is another damning mark. And, I say that as someone who watches soccer-not a whole lot, but every game the US Men’s National Team plays, the US games in the current U-20 World Cup, the rare MLS match, and now that I can, the occasional European league game, including domestic and CL games. I simply refuse to spend too much of my leisure time on something where incompetence is so easily stood despite competence being (in some cases) easy to obtain.
September 30, 2009, 1:07 pmDS says:
Europeans AND South Americans. Verejao, Nocioni, and Ginobli are the best/worst floppers. And no, not a coincidence.
September 30, 2009, 1:11 pmjpe says:
I think that’s right. The difference between soccer and basketball on the one hand and football and baseball on the other is that the former are fast-paced and fun while the latter are plodding and boring. There’s plenty of time for instant replay in football, while it would break up the fluidity of the game in basketball.
September 30, 2009, 1:19 pmTatil says:
Do you have any source for this claim? I used to watch soccer quite a bit, one or two arguable offside calls per game were all I have seen. The “clearly blown” calls were very rare.
Well, take a look at that Nature article (and other things that a good Google search will turn up). I might have exaggerated a bit — but the evidence is pretty clear that 20-25% of the offside calls are wrong. Figuring 5 or 6 against each team in each game, that’s 2 or 3 wrong each game. DGP
September 30, 2009, 1:30 pmBesides, as mentioned before, basketball works the same way without much if any replay review of calls, yet it is quite popular. It is due to the style of the sport, not due to a big cultural difference.
Greek Geek says:
I enjoy watching soccer, but one of my biggest gripes is the “offsides” rule – it has always seemed to me to be a penalty for a superior athlete who happens to have gotten ahead of his defenders (isn’t this the point?)
Also, the ridiculous tone taken towards American sports in the post here is highly unnecessary, and only serves to make Prof. Post appear to be one of those lame people who come back from their study abroad liking soccer simply because Americans don’t like it.
September 30, 2009, 1:41 pmGreek Geek says:
Oh, and boo Olympiakos!! Pan – ath – a – nai – kos!!!!!!!!!
September 30, 2009, 1:43 pmA.S. says:
20% of calls are wrong? That seems too high to me.
Moreover, the issue doesn’t seem to me to be much different than holding in the NFL, block/charge in the NBA and ball/strike in MLB. In other words, there are difficult calls that are often wrong in all sports. It has nothing to do with national cultures.
(Also, Arshvin’s back heel was sublime, wasn’t it? I assume that’s the specific goal that caused this post?)
September 30, 2009, 1:44 pmguy in the veal calf office says:
What would happen if a ref called offside but was reversed on review? PK if its inside the box?
Basketball is the closest American analog (I understand each individual BB score is less important than a Futbol score, but a thousand cuts kills as surely as a single stab). The same play in BB is routinely called offensive foul, defensive foul or no foul. 3 seconds is waved off for the non-statutory reason that the player looked like he was egressing. LeBron’s hop step last year revealed widespread confusion over traveling.
Also, why doesn’t Sentanta project a yellow line showing the offside for TV viewers, like the 1st down marker in American football? Then we could really suffer righteous indignation.
September 30, 2009, 1:50 pmRoger says:
Simple explanation: Soccer is a Third World sport with Third World rules.
September 30, 2009, 1:51 pmJK says:
Sometimes it seems like Soccer fans are dead set on trying to make be dislike the game despite the fact that overall I think it’s a great game. Why is it so important that soccer is better than every other sport in every possible way?
And why the constant comparison to “American Football”? Is it REALLY just because both sports are called “football”? They are very different games that are enjoyable for very different reasons, there’s no reason why liking one has to mean disliking the other. As far as I can tell the logic is usually: 1) I like Soccer, 2) X sport (probably American Football) is different than Soccer in Y way, 3) There is a good reason why soccer does Y in the way it does, 4) therefore X sport “does it wrong”, 5) therefore X sport is inferior to Soccer.
There seems to be some segment of Soccer fans that are primarily interested in why Soccer is better than other sports, particularly American Football, rather than any genuine interest in the game itself. It’s true to some extent among fans of any sport, but Soccer fans seem to take it to a whole different level.
September 30, 2009, 1:51 pmMartinned says:
Actually, recently they’ve been experimenting with extra refs on the goal line, to check whether a ball is a goal or not. Currently, the game has four refs. Plus two goal-judges, that would make six.
Also, I don’t think anyone would revolt if a small amount of video refereeing were introduced. Only FIFA are very adamant about this. In rugby, they’ve been using video refs for years, at the referee’s discretion and only on limited occasions. There, it seems to cause very little concern, and I don’t see why it would in football.
September 30, 2009, 2:05 pmjcm says:
“American’s would like the game much better if there simply were no offsides ruleI enjoy watching soccer, but one of my biggest gripes is the “offsides” rule – it has always seemed to me to be a penalty for a superior athlete who happens to have gotten ahead of his defenders (isn’t this the point?)”
No, the reason is to avoid the opportunistic player standing in front of the goal waiting a long pass. The rules gives advantage to the better athlete., the one who can go ahead the defense . Once the ball is in the air after touched by a teammate you can go ahead of the defender outrunning him. The best player are able to put the ball just in time to pass the last man. Usually with the play called a wall.If the ball comes from a rival you can go to it . Its not common but you can see after a bad kick of the goalkeeper , a rival going for an easy goal
September 30, 2009, 2:10 pmjcm says:
Offsides rules is the equivalent of the 3 seconds in paint for basketball
September 30, 2009, 2:19 pmMartinned says:
Assuming the difference described in the OP is real, I’d say this is the most likely explanation. America is where lawyers rule the world.
September 30, 2009, 2:31 pmHyman Rosen says:
I’ve often heard it said that Americans consider soccer boring because it’s low-scoring. Whether or not that’s true, the low scores of soccer games contribute to a different problem, a mathematical one. This problem is that even though scores are extremely low, it is nevertheless the score which is used to determine who wins and who loses. Scoring attempts have random outcomes. They’re biased in favor of the better team, but nevertheless a particular attempt will have many random factors – the exact position of the players, the exact angle at which the shoe hits the ball, and so on. That means that weaker teams stand a chance of scoring against stronger ones, and when that happens, the general low probability of scoring means that the weaker team will win. This is especially problematic in single-elimination playoff structures. In a higher-scoring game, there are more opportunities to recover.
September 30, 2009, 2:35 pmOren says:
Nonsense! The game would have to be played to at least 100 shots on goal total for this to be even remotely statistically true.
September 30, 2009, 2:40 pmLucas says:
With regard to the derogatory comment from Roger, please note that soccer is actually a First World sports, played extensively in the Third World (should someone be inclined to use these terms). Soccer was created in England and is played around the whole “First” World.
As for this …
Actually, most of the time is not a penalty for a superior athlete who got ahead of his defenders but rather a lazy or opportunistic athlete that stayed behind them just waiting …
September 30, 2009, 2:42 pmMike Rappeport says:
JCM Said
No, the reason is to avoid the opportunistic player standing in front of the goal waiting a long pass.
That’s true of course, although the reason is that the English, awho made and still basically make, the soccer rules thought such a “hanger” to be unsportsmanlike. However, that doesn’t say anything aabout why the soccer offsides rule is the way it is. There is an offside rule in hockey also (puck must precede any player into offensive zone). It is a rule which
makes much more sense since it
a)prevents “hanging” without effecting rest of game
b) is easily adaptable to soccer, and would result in much easier job for refs.
But just try selling it to any soccer “fan”
September 30, 2009, 3:04 pmHm says:
the rugby world cup final a few years ago was pretty much decided on a blown knock-on call, I had read something in SI about how rugby fans just take that as part of the game, as opposed to if something similar had happened in american football.
September 30, 2009, 3:04 pmJK says:
RE: offsides rule
I agree with the posters stating or implying that to what extent there is a problem with offsides calls it’s more rooted in the rule itself being poorly constructed rather than the enforcement mechanism being insufficiently accurate.
Prof Post and others are right that in a continuous action game like Soccer or Basketball that pauses in action to review rules is inappropriate. That means that rules really need to be simple and clear.
“Offsides” is a rule non-fundamental rule that is designed to alter the flow of play and effective strategies (avoid a game where an offensive player stands by the goal and waits for a long kick). But it does this in a ham-handed way that is too literal (and technical) for a continuous action game.
You can have rules like that in a game with natural stoppage like American Football. And that’s part of the beauty of AF, the nature of play can be crafted and altered is very specific ways though rules alterations without disrupting the flow of the game. That’s why strategy is such a big part of AF, because if a dominate strategy is discovered, the rules can be easily and intentionally altered to disrupt that dominate strategy.
Soccer’s beauty is in it’s flow and elegance, and as such it’s much more difficult to craft its strategic dynamics with precise rules without either disrupting the flow or creating inconsistent calls. Perhaps there is no better solution to the problem addressed by the offsides rule, and it’s been accepted that the inconsistency of calls is the preferable option compared to either disrupted flow or accepting the problem. There’s nothing irrational about that, but it’s a far cry from saying that inconsistent calls are ceteris parabus a net benefit.
September 30, 2009, 3:26 pmJK says:
I disagree that American Football fans don’t accept blown calls as “part of the game.” There is a huge difference between trying to prevent bad calls, and using them as an excuse for loosing a game (or to claim the result was illegitimate). My experience, and confirmed in the OP by David Post (“we yell and scream and moan about lousy offside calls all the time”), is that Soccer fans bitch about blown calls to no end. Sure they also accept it as “part of the game,” but the idea that they accept with some sort of zen-like calm that doesn’t exist in American sports is just silly. Complaining about a bad call affecting the outcome of a game is AT LEAST as taboo in American Football as in Rugby or Soccer.
September 30, 2009, 3:43 pmFedya says:
Please don’t get me started. I’m a tennis fan who despises the Shot Spot/Hawkeye system. We got it because a bunch of moronic commentators (Pat McEnroe et al.) treated the pretty pictures as though it’s infallible. In fact, we can see, on clay, that the ball leaves a mark and often, when there’s a dispute over whether a ball was in or out the chair umpire will get down from the chair and inspect the mark to make a ruling. Often enough, the umpire’s decision, which almost always mollifies both players, yields a different result than the pretty picture of the Hawkeye computer guess. When this has happened, Pat McEnroe, to his eternal mendacious shame, has argued that this must mean the umpire is calling the wrong mark.
You may also want to watch this video from the Nicole Vaidisova v. Alla Kudryavtseva match at the 2007 US Open. On a disupted call, the pretty picture shows the ball hitting the line, while the word guess claims the ball was out. If they can’t get drawing the picture right, I wouldn’t trust the system to calculate where the ball actually landed.
September 30, 2009, 3:51 pmrichard says:
There is an offside rule in hockey also (puck must precede any player into offensive zone). It is a rule whichmakes much more sense since ita)prevents “hanging” without effecting rest of gameb) is easily adaptable to soccer, and would result in much easier job for refs.But just try selling it to any soccer “fan”
Good point. The offsides rule in hockey is a good one. The offsides rule in soccer is far too restrictive (sort of like banning the fast break in basketball)
September 30, 2009, 3:55 pmBob White says:
The role of error correction in soccer officiating stands in contrast to ice hockey, a sport to which it bears some similarities. At least at the NHL level, all goals or potential goals are reviewed by a video replay official. Like soccer, the lack of call does not result in a stoppage of play, but unlike soccer, when an officiating error is detected, it’s corrected and the game restored to the situation it would have been in had the call been made correctly in the first place. Note that I believe the NHL does it only for goals or non-goals, so this doesn’t comport perfectly to video review of offside calls in soccer, but the basic point is that it’s not the continuous play nature of soccer but something else that makes it unamenable to correcting officiating error.
September 30, 2009, 4:00 pmwm13 says:
As a soccer referee (for my daughter’s travel league, not for English Premier League or anything), I have to say that it’s encouraging to hear that 20% of all offsides calls are wrong. I worry after every game about how many calls I got wrong. (Mind you, the Westchester Youth Soccer League parents generally seem to believe that the incorrect calls are more like 80% of the total.)
September 30, 2009, 4:00 pmDNJ says:
American sports really are remarkably bad to watch.
September 30, 2009, 4:02 pmDNJ says:
That is probably true in some places. But in New Zealand, where I am from, rugby is the national sport and followed very passionately. We lost to France in the Quarter-Finals of the 2007 Rugby World Cup when we were the better team because of some very bad refereeing, including the failure to call a clear French forward pass that led to the match-winning try. We are still complaining about that. The English referee, Wayne Barnes, was vilified and became public enemy no. 1.
I hate to imagine what the reaction would be like if this happened next time in 2011, when we are hosting the World Cup. We haven’t won the World Cup since 1987, when we last hosted it, despite having easily the best record of any international team of the last 20 years. If we don’t win the World Cup this time at home, the country is going to get very depressed and angry (the coaches will doubtless be vilified). This sort of process always goes on when we don’t win the World Cup, and it will be even worse at home and not having won it for so long. After our loss in the semi-finals to France in 1999 (we were favourites for the tournament and blew a comfortable lead), the coach, John Hart, was not treated very pleasantly. He was spat on when at the races and the cover of a prominent New Zealand rugby magazine read “John Hart: Guilty.” I just hope we win in 2011 or the national mood will be awful. If we don’t win, it might also be very bad news for the Government: there should be an election shortly thereafter.
September 30, 2009, 4:07 pmW4LT says:
Greek Greek is dead on. The offsides rule is the worst thing about soccer and the #1 reason it struggles to reach major league status in the US. It has such a Harrison Bergeron feel to it, shackling the superior team, player and effort in the name of bland equality.
Americans like Deep Strike. They like getting behind the defense and running amok. They like it when Generals Sherman or Patton make a breakthrough and run roughshod on the enemy, fairness be damned.
I don’t like American football, I find it boring – as George Will once wrote, it combines the two worst features of American society: a series of committee meetings punctuated with brief outbursts of violence. But, I like soccer even less, because of that offsides rule. And, I love the game of lacrosse, which is very similar to soccer, but it has the fastbreak option. And you get to hit people with sticks, of course.
September 30, 2009, 4:22 pmKeithK says:
If 20% of offsides calls are incorrect in high level competition then it points to a rule that is poorly formulated. Several people have mentioned the offsides rule in hockey. I consider the hockey rule to be superior not so much because of its effect on the game but because its construction makes it easier to enforce. (Not that linesmen don’t blow offsides calls too, but no where near the rates that DP suggesst for soccer.)
September 30, 2009, 4:22 pmMartinned says:
Actually, it occurs to me the problem/difference is something else entirely. It has to do with the attitude towards sports. In the US, sports is entertainment, like a movie or a concert. Football, in those places where it is sport no. 1, is not a matter of life and death, it’s much more important than that.
The result is that no one messes with the rules of the game. Ever. They don’t just make the goal bigger if someone shows that that would make the game more attractive. The rules are cast in stone. During my lifetime, the only rule change I can remember is the ban on passing back to the keeper, but it’s been years since I’ve seen anyone fouled for that. (Just last weekend, I saw a pretty obvious case, but it was decided that it was not intentional, so the ref let it go.)
The laws are football are like the US Constitution: God’s gift to mankind, cast in stone, never to be changed, ever.
P.S. The problem with the off-side rule is that it requires the assistant-ref to watch two things at the same time: the moment of play, to his left, and the place of the player who might be off-side, right in front of him. If his head starts out pointed to the former, observes that the ball is played, and then turns to the latter, it is often going to look like off-side when it is not.
September 30, 2009, 4:43 pmseattle law student says:
I think that might be too cumbersome to do in-game. I would like to see an after the match review of all the flops whether they resulted in a penalty or not, with a fine scaled to the player’s salary for those which which prove to be a flop rather than a hit.
In the interests of full disclosure I’m a rugby guy so I tend to think that any soccer player who takes a dive is an epic pansy. Get up, rub some dirt on it, and keep playing.
September 30, 2009, 4:59 pmDon says:
In soccer there is a predisposition to call offsides even when there is no violation.
Is this really any different than the SCOTUS clerk pool where there is a strong predisposition to not recommend granting of cert to even very strong petitions? The only difference is one is a game and the other involves matters of huge importance and the court permits young inexperienced kids who have yet to understand that there are corrupt prosecuters and judges who screw over parties for the simple reason they believe they will never be held accountable.
September 30, 2009, 5:02 pmwm13 says:
Further to what martinned said, I have often thought that the game of soccer would be improved if penalty kicks were reserved for fouls that disrupt an obvious goal-scoring opportunity (one of the current red card offenses), and if all other fouls within the penalty area were rewarded by a direct kick from the top of the penalty arc. As it stands, a penalty kick tends to be almost a death sentence in a close game, so fouls in the penalty area are called very inconsistently.
My change will never happen, however. The capriciousness of having occasional near-automatic goals is part of the game.
September 30, 2009, 5:07 pmJK says:
I donno, that seems like some unnecessary pseudo-psychology. Inner city black youths with Basketball? Texan high schools with American Football? Even rural Canadians with Hockey? Every sport with a major professional league has regions and demographics where there is an insane level of dedication. Places where a major sport is both a distraction from an otherwise crappy life as well as a theoretical ticket out of that life.
Basic foot racing rules have remained constant for thousands of years. I have a really hard time believing that says something about people who are interested in foot races rather than something about the nature of foot racing. There may be some additional collective action problems with soccer (I don’t know much about the power of FIFA to alter rules), but I see no reason to believe it’s due to some similar cultural characteristic share by nations that prefer soccer, and not by others.
My guess is the rules of soccer have evolved more than you realize: what gets called as a foul, hand balls, official ball specifications, timeouts, replacements, etc. But generally soccer is a simple game by design that doesn’t really need a lot of rules tweaking (and I agree that’s a great part of the game).
September 30, 2009, 5:08 pmHm says:
DNJ, it’s funny you say that because I was talking about that call with a coworker from Australia, who basically was annoyed at the ref, but blew it off based on the fact of southern vs. northern hemisphere rugby- southern hemisphere (SA, NZ, Oz) is less based upon the ref (IIRC) than that of the northern hemisphere (England Scotland Ireland Wales France etc.).
September 30, 2009, 5:37 pmMichael B says:
The linesman can not both watch the ball and watch simultaneously the position of the forwards. The current system has a legacy of aristocratic arrogance. The petty linesman has to judge what likely he can not know. The plebeian players are left to luck as to whether or not their honest efforts will be rewarded. OTOH, they can also enjoy flagrant fouls if the referees attention is taken elsewhere. In all of this it varies from the American meritricious ideal.
September 30, 2009, 5:42 pmMartinned says:
Meritocracy in American sports? Really? Is that why all major American sports leagues are organized on Marxist principles?
September 30, 2009, 6:38 pmJim G says:
“I enjoy watching soccer, but one of my biggest gripes is the “offsides” rule – it has always seemed to me to be a penalty for a superior athlete who happens to have gotten ahead of his defenders (isn’t this the point?)”
I suppose you would like gridiron if the team with the ball could start a play with their receivers anywhere on the field.
If it wasn’t for the existence of offside, both teams would cover the entire field, and nobody would be able to get ahead of the other team. That’s the whole point of offside — a team has go “through” the other team, not “over” them. Just like gridiron, except the location of the “line of scrimmage” is fluid.
September 30, 2009, 7:08 pmFedya says:
Didn’t they change the rule to allow keepers to move from side to side on penalty kicks (but not forward, although everybody cheats on that anyway)?
And it also seems as though you slept through the entire golden goal era, and worse, the silver goal era. :-p
September 30, 2009, 7:23 pmDNJ says:
Hm,
Yes, Northern Hemisphere referees are unpopular down here. They are seen as too pedantic and whistle-happy.
September 30, 2009, 8:52 pmJT says:
Maybe the reason is that Europeans and other footie followers understand the amount of luck that goes into winning any team sport on a professional level. Take Amfoot as an example. Last week’s Giants-Cowboys game was pretty much decided on an interception that was kicked up by a receiver into the cornerback’s hands. Total fluke. Or the final play of the Denver game the week before. How many baseball games are decided by whether a ball lands just within the white line, or bounces just foul. As much analysis goes into these contests, most of the time the game is decided by something uncontrollable that could easily go either way. The refs are just part of the luck of the game. Sometimes they break for you, sometimes they dont.
September 30, 2009, 10:34 pmAlso, the more you try to control an outcome that has no meaning, the sillier you look.
Jeff Walden says:
I’m glad to see some people getting it right, but to everyone else: it’s offside, not “offsides”. Why everyone messes this up so much is beyond me.
October 1, 2009, 3:20 amGreek Geek says:
This and the other explanations of offside make some sense, but the ONLY times I have ever seen it called were not with a lazy guy from the other side sitting back, but someone running past his defender deep near the goal to score a goal or make a spectacular try, only to have it called off because he was offside.
The comparison to “the gridiron” is imperfect at best, considering American Football stops and sets up a line of scrimmage. If a soccer team gets the ball deep in their own territory, advances down the field toward the opponents goal, and at the last minute the attacker sprints ahead before the ball is kicked, this gets called off. If the attacker sprints ahead and then is seen by the ball handler, similar to the way a point guard in basketball or the quarterback would do, this does not create an unfair advantage for the attacking team, but merely creates a comparative athletic advantage, and to me, is the point of the match in the first place.
Clearly, I am not lobbying to have it changed, and it really doesn’t matter to me – I still watch big matches when I have the chance, and I still find the game enjoyable. This rule just seems to only slow down the game and defeat otherwise legitimate scoring chances.
October 1, 2009, 5:34 amMichael says:
I’ve always thought that soccer would be a much more interesting sport if the offsides rule was eliminated entirely.
October 1, 2009, 6:05 amwm13 says:
There have been some other rule changes in soccer over the past few decades:
–the elimination of the rule that the ball roll forward one revolution after any free kick before being touched by a second player.
–the elimination of the rule that goal kicks be taken from the same side of the goal box that the ball was on when it crossed the end line.
–various FIFA interpretative directives on when offsides is to be called.
October 1, 2009, 6:14 amstan says:
While there have been some minor tinkering with the edges of the rules, the fundamentals, including the offside rule, have been in place for a century or more. Rugby’s offside rule has the same foundation as soccer’s.
Getting offside right in a game played at the highest levels is incredibly difficult, because, as pointed out earlier, it requires keeping track of events in two locations simultaneously… the position of the attacker relative to the second to last defender and the actions of the player with the ball, who is often some distance and at some significant angle from the potentially offside attacker. Often, the AR has to do this while running at a full sprint. At lower levels, ARs can use the sound of the ball being struck as a means of determining the moment of truth, but in a stadium filled with tens of thousands of fans, that doesn’t work so well.
The issue becomes even trickier, because the mere fact that a player is offside means nothing unless they actually make a play for the ball or actively interfere with the defense. One of the exquisite moments in a soccer game is when the attack is able to break an attack behind the defense without drawing an offside call. In a sense they have to fool the defense without fooling the AR (linesman).
However, it is a miscalulation to say that ARs get it wrong 20% of the time. If you consider the number of non-calls made during a game, I suspect that the error rate is far lower. The 20% figure may represent the false positives, but not the percentage of incorect calls, overall.
October 1, 2009, 7:16 amTitus says:
The main reason behind the high rate of blown offside calls is the inherent difficulty in assessing whether the infraction has incurred or not. In most sports calls, the official only needs to focus on a single object at once: foot on ground, ball in hand (or on ground, etc.); even in cases where there are multiple objects (such as calling a runner out on a tag in baseball or determining if a receiver has a foot down and control of the ball in football), the two foci are quite near to each other spatially. But the offside call requires the linesman to know two facts simultaneously, both of which normally cannot be perceived within the same field of vision: the players’ relative positions and the playing of the ball. So he has to listen for the ball being played, and match that up with the visual perception of the players at the same time. Since even youth rec games can be loud enough to obscure the sound of the ball being kicked, there are understandable inherent difficulties in making what is, in theory, a painfully straightforward call.
I speak from experience as someone who used to enjoy soccer quite a bit, before it was ruined for me by several years’ worth of officiating it.
October 1, 2009, 7:38 amTitus says:
Hmm, it appears someone has already made my comments—what I get for not taking the time to read the whole thread.
October 1, 2009, 7:38 ammark says:
It’s interesting that some comments on the offside law in soccer on a blog which focuses on Constitutional Law complain that it is too complex. I’ve coached soccer for a long, long time and even the youngest players “get” the basic concept. Sure, they might not understand all the case law out there regarding odd situations, but the basic rule is easily understood. Kids agree with it too. No one is more hated then the player who stands by the goal in practice while everyone else is doing all the work and then, through luck (aka cherry picking or, historically, sneaking), gets a free ball and scores.
Even in adult matches played without offside (as in some tournament rules), when you watch the game you find the players still kinda play as though the rule was in effect. You don’t find a player posted way beyond the other team. The game is still played pretty much as though the law were there as that’s how the players’ brains work or have been trained.
How would the law be changed to make the game better? Intent? Change the line where one were not offside from the midfield to closer to the goal? Offside was there in the earliest inventions of the game. Things have been tried from the original you had to be behind the ball at the moment it was played or you were…off the side. That was too restrictive and the number of players were changed to three needed between the player and the goal. That opened the game up and brought in more midfield play because of the concept of “passing” rather than dribble until you lost the ball or scored. Then the revolution when the number of players were reduced to two. Now play was more balanced and the game more tactically and visually interesting.
October 1, 2009, 9:33 amMaradona says:
“harrison bergeronesque?” Either you dont understand the story or you dont understand the rule of offsides. Ill give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s the rule.
October 1, 2009, 11:10 amThe good team beats the offside trap, the bad team fails to beat it and is caught offside. thus the bad team is penalized – not like the story at all. the good team makes runs at the right time, and sends balls through at the correct angles, or like barcelona, simply dices the other team up even when they have 4 people in the box.
Plus, in response to other commentators, the offsides rules does not “prevent fast breaks…yada yada Gen. Patton nonsense.” The only reason you HAVE fast breaks is because the offsides rule induces the defenders to stay much farther forward. Thus opening space BEHIND for the fast break. (You are right that you dont have fast breaks like in basketball, 2 vs 0, for some thunderous dunk… but who cares, that gets pretty old really. I like the contested dunks much better)
Plus, of course, you are never offsides if you are behind the ball
Visitor Again says:
There are two main obstacles to technological advances in officiating. One is that resort to video replays will disrupt the free-flow and spontaneity of the game, certainly its most attractive features. Work is underway on computerized electronic equipment that will detect offside plays instantaneously, which would remove that objection. But FIFA, the game’s world governing body, has always insisted that, with some minor exceptions like youth football, the game must be played the same way at all levels, whether a Sunday league contest or the World Cup final, and it would be prohibitively expensive to require installation of such advanced computerized equipment on all the world’s football pitches.
The old North American Soccer League implemented offside lines in each half at the 35-yard mark (if I remember the yard number correctly) for a couple of seasons, but it got rebuffed by FIFA.
I’ve followed the game since I was a wee lad in England just after World War II. The game has changed radically. Gone are shoulder charges and tackles from behind. Forwards used to trundle goalkeepers carrying the ball into the net for a goal! Now they are forbidden pretty much to touch the keeper.
Still, Martinned is correct that those in charge of the laws are pretty conservative. Changes in the laws of the game and in their interpretation are made by the International Football Association Board, which consists of a member from each of the four home associations (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland) and four members from FIFA.
I’d like to see use of technological aids as long as it does not at all interfere with the game’s free flow. I’d also like to see diving dealt with. I wrote a piece (in two parts on one page) on my website that describes one form of foul by deception and how the authorities flunked miserably in dealing with it. I’d also like to see players who shield the ball with their bodies until it crosses the touch line with no intention of playing it called for obstruction. It’s now an accepted and often-seen tactic, but it disrupts the flow of the game. Some of my pet peeves.
Those who think European fans accept bad calls should read the comments appearing on the Guardian’s football website after the weekend games. But it’s correct that few want to change the laws and their interpretation.
October 1, 2009, 1:33 pmJimG (another one) says:
Assistant Referees botch 20 percent of offside calls in soccer? This statistic is definitely worse than a damned lie. By far, most offside judgments by soccer ARs find that there’s no infraction, no reason to raise the flag, so that unless you’re a trained ref and watching the AR and what he sees, you just won’t realize there was a decision made. Even if you’re only counting the judgments that there was an offside infraction, the error percentage runs in single digit percentages. Any sports official would be pleased with error rates in that range.
To those who hate soccer’s offside rule: It’s almost identical to gridiron football’s offside rule, insofar as that applies to passing the ball. The timing is different: in gridiron, the receiver must not be ahead of the ball until it’s snapped into play, while in soccer, he must not be ahead of the ball until after it is played forward by his teammate.
The offside rules make both games exciting, technically and tactically demanding. We all enjoy the well-timed and executed run by a receiver, finding just enough open space, and the perfect pass sent to just the right spot at just the right instant.
Did you ever notice: in soccer, very little of the time from kickoff to final whistle is taken up by the officials’ doing their jobs. In gridiron, most of the time is taken by officials deciding what happened in the last play, then setting up the next one, and finally restarting the clock’s counting.
October 2, 2009, 3:26 am