I feel like if we have to judge offside by the current ruleset, letting a machine decide, or having lines pced on the backmost pixels is the fairest. It may be millimetres offside but at the end of the day, that is offside. Harsh, hard to swallow, but also correct.
That said, I think maybe it’s time we look at the offside rule and how it’s decided. Obviously we can’t do away with the rule altogether as that leads to cherry-picking, which leads to defenses sitting by their own goals all game. It would suck. But maybe we need to reinvent the offside rules and what it means to be offside. Another method for stopping cherry-picking that isn’t so controversial.
Now all of these ideas are absolutely garbage, but the point is they highlight completely new systems, not trying to it tech to the current one. Potentially something like if any body part overlaps with the last man, it’s onside (if you want to favour attacker, which we should really). Or the reverse, there must be a gap between the attacker and the defender before the attacker reaches the last man (if you want to favour the defense, which is a bit lame). Maybe it’s a case of creating a shot clock type situation where if you are ahead of the ball but beyond the defender for 1 full second, you are offside. Or use liens on the pitch and must be within 1/3rd a ptichlength of the ball when it’s kicked or something where the defenders don’t matter at all but stops cherrypicking.
I feel like if we have to judge offside by the current ruleset, letting a machine decide, or having lines pced on the backmost pixels is the fairest. It may be millimetres offside but at the end of the day, that is offside. Harsh, hard to swallow, but also correct.
That said, I think maybe it’s time we look at the offside rule and how it’s decided. Obviously we can’t do away with the rule altogether as that leads to cherry-picking, which leads to defenses sitting by their own goals all game. It would suck. But maybe we need to reinvent the offside rules and what it means to be offside. Another method for stopping cherry-picking that isn’t so controversial.
Now all of these ideas are absolutely garbage, but the point is they highlight completely new systems, not trying to it tech to the current one. Potentially something like if any body part overlaps with the last man, it’s onside (if you want to favour attacker, which we should really). Or the reverse, there must be a gap between the attacker and the defender before the attacker reaches the last man (if you want to favour the defense, which is a bit lame). Maybe it’s a case of creating a shot clock type situation where if you are ahead of the ball but beyond the defender for 1 full second, you are offside. Or use liens on the pitch and must be within 1/3rd a ptichlength of the ball when it’s kicked or something where the defenders don’t matter at all but stops cherrypicking.