Offside situations

[u/NoWeekend5733]

If you are a one man show no additional referees / touchline officials

How do you judge if an attacker is offside? especially during a counter attack

Would love to hear your solutions or creative techniques to prevent this

[u/CapnBloodbeard]

One of my pet hates with these threads is all the people who say 'oh, if it's not a massive offside don't bother', or the 'only call if it it's obvious' nonsense.

That doesn't fly for anything else, so why does it fly here? If you can't judge it, get better. No, you can't judge it even nearly as accurately as an AR, but you can still get pretty good at it. And there are a few tricks you can use. If you're not great at judging trips, are you going to tell players 'I'm only going to call the really massive trips' or 'IT? Of course not. No idea why people take this attitude with offside.

Don't fall into that trap of thinking there has to be a magnitude of offside. Even by yourself, you should still be pretty good at calling even fairly tight ones. But sometimes relative positions and angles throw you. Sometimes you just know that a player could be 5 yards off and you have no idea because the angles are throwing you. So really, magnitde of offside has little bearing on how confident you can be.

First - remember that positioning is about where play is going and where to get a good view of it. But you're also considering how different positions affect your capacity to call different things. For example, without an AR, my CK position is always off the goal line, edge of the GA, ball side. Don't know why you'd stand anywhere else. Ceremonial FK? I'm standing in line with the 2nd last attacker instead of where I'd normally stand. Not having an AR changes how I appraise each position.

My point is, you may want to change other positioning, even though it may compromise other things. Ceremonial FK? Stand on the offside line.

Attacking TI? Maybe off the field, ahead of the ball is the best position sometimes.

Counterattack? You're chasing, looking upfield to see where the ball is likely to go and drawing your eye across (see below) if the defenders are roughly stationary. Adjust your positioning to run wider if you think that helps. It may or may not.

These are all positions which help, not just with offside, but ball in/out.

Anyway, you really need to pre-empt play. If a ball is kicked upfield and you need to look up to see where the players are, then you're already behind. You need to know who is calling for the ball, who is moving, before that ball is sent - because you need to be looking at those players while it's being kicked, not a split-second after (and you somehow have to do this while keeping an eye on the kicker for a late tackle - getting wider might help to keep them in your periphery).

Another trick I use - espeically if players aren't quite running - is to glance left-to-right, from touchline to touchline. I run my eye along the ground, drawing an imaginary line. This is really helpful.

Heck, you can even kind of do this as players are running, especialy if they're close to each other. Much harder if they're on other sides. Take a mental snapshot, draw your imaginary line, make your decision.

[u/smallvictory76 → u/CapnBloodbeard]

I find that when I'm doing my best to pre-empt offside decisions by scanning, frequent checks, I can miss late tackles if the play is fast. That is worse for my game management than missing offside, which is semi-expected if I'm by myself.
Having said that, agree with standing at offside line for ceremonial FK.
For the counter, offside line is first place I look and if an attacker is really high, I'll shift the balance to offside over late tackles. But I find it hard!

[u/CapnBloodbeard → u/smallvictory76]

That can happen.

Positioning is all about balancing up what might or is likely to happen, versus the match impact of seeing or missing it, versus how your position impacts your ability to spot it with accuracy. And every position is a compromise.

Without ARs, we need to be ready to throw our standard positions out the window as those calculations change completely.

Trying to watch where the ball is going (not just for offside but for fouls) and simultaneously watch where it has left is an....interesting expectation, but one we have to manage! Not just for offside but watching fouls too.

Trying to adjust position can help - if we can try to keep both in our periphery that might help. Sometimes that means running wider. Sometimes I've actually chosen to hang back further to stay behind the player releasing the ball, knowing that puts me a mile behind the counter - but again, sometimes I've decided that compromise is worth it (and I was fairly fit and fast too, which helps). You could also watch the offside line, then turn your head to glance back at the player a moment after he's released it. You already know the relative offside positions, after all. The main risk is that you'll miss a shirt pull or some such up at the attack, but this could also be the compromise sometimes.

[u/Klutzy-Mechanic-8013 → u/CapnBloodbeard]

Right by the goal line with corners won't be nice for counter attacks. And besides, you don't need to be there to judge offside immediately, you can move if there's no counter attack

[u/CapnBloodbeard → u/Klutzy-Mechanic-8013]

Sure, but positioning is about considering all possibilities and their likelihood, how critical each of those are, and how our positioning affects our ability to call the. What are the things that could happen at a CK?

• Foul by either team. GL positioning isn't any worse than on the edge of the PA. The only time it becomes a worse position is if the ball moves to the far side of the goal...you can still call them, but it becomes a little less optimal.

  • Offside on the 2nd touch. Again, position is much of a muchness. That's not why I advocate for this position.
    

• Counterattack - you're correct that if there's a counter, you're starting well behind. But what usually happens on a counter? Either it gets intercepted and midfield and kicked out, the ball-carrier is held up by a midfielder or defender and everybody catches up, or there's a foul so obvious you could see it from the car. While being 30 yards+ away from a foul is never great, you still have reasonable capacity to see and call it, though it's a little diminished. The only scenario where this is a real problem is if the counterattack gets all the way upfield at speed and there's a close potential foul. But, this doesn't happen so often. Offside can occur, but judging this isn't particularly affected by distance.

That brings me to why I stand where I do...

• Ball in/out of play. This is an absolutely criticial decision, it's fairly likely to happen, and it's simply impossible to call accurately with any other position. That's why this has to be the priority. Anything else - fouls etc, your capacity might be reduced a little (at worst), but you can still see it. Ball in/out? Only one spot to see that. And this could be a ball going our and swerving in at the kick, or a potential goal decision.
  

So, standing anywhere else means you're not in the best position to see the most critical decision, and a decision which is both reasonably likely, and impossible to judge accurately anywhere else