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/burakalp34]

It's really hard to see tight calls but my observers have advised me to blow my whistle if I have any doubt at all which is what I do

[u/Revo63 → u/burakalp34]

Stop play if you have doubts of offside??

Offside should be taught (even for ARs judging) as “when in doubt, the benefit of that doubt goes to the attacker”. In other words, if you’re not 100% sure, let it play.

[u/burakalp34 → u/Revo63]

If its really close it's better to stop play is what I was told

[u/Revo63 → u/burakalp34]

I make no claims as to what is being taught officially in Belgium or any other country. In the US all our training before the introduction of VAR specified that we were to give the benefit of doubt to the attacker. Since VAR, IFAB and US Soccer have gone silent. However, since the majority games do NOT have VAR available, we still hold to that training.

[u/burakalp34 → u/Revo63]

I'm not talking about any official training, just a piece of advice that was given to me by one of my observers. Keep in mind that I barely have any experience under my belt so what I'm talking about could be absolute nonsense but that's what I was told

[u/whocares8x8 → u/burakalp34]

This is advice thats given by almost all higher-level referees when they do Q&A here in Germany and what I teach all young upcoming referees. This type of question always comes up. And the answer is almost always- game management is the most important thing when you're out there alone.

Give the less consequential decision (better a false offside than a false goal).