In football (or soccer), the offside rule is used to prevent players from gaining an unfair advantage by positioning themselves behind the opposing team’s defenders. The rule is designed to encourage attacking play and to prevent players from simply hanging back and waiting for a long pass or cross.
Rules for offside in football
The rules are quite simple, but during a game play it can still be hard to determine if a player is offside or not.
- A player is in an offside position if they are closer to the opposing team’s goal line than the ball and the last two players from the opposing team (usually the one of the last opposing players is the goalkeeper, which mean that the player need to be on the correct side of only one defender).
- A player is not in an offside position if they are level with the last two defenders or if they are level with the ball.
- A player is not in an offside position if they are in their own half of the field.
- A player is not in an offside position if they receive the ball directly from a goal kick, a throw-in, or a corner kick.
If a player is in an offside position when the ball is played to them by a teammate, the assistant referee will raise their flag to signal that the player is offside. The referee will then stop play and award an indirect free kick to the opposing team from the spot where the offside occurred.
At bigger tournaments like the World Cup, the VAR system (Video Assisted Referee) is used to determine if someone is offside or not as well as other situations that affect the game. The referee then many times let’s the play continue to avoid interfering before knowing if they are correct.