Abolishing the offside rule? Thoughts?

sounds like a stupid idea, teams would just leave their strikers on the penalty area and then hoof long ball after long ball to them, as a percentage of balls would get through.
 
I've played hockey for 25 years so have been through all rule changes with offside, from when it was on halfway line, then to the 25 yard line, and finally scrapped.

It has been good for hockey allowing the game to flow more freely, but do not think it is right for football. Hockey was a stop start game that was in dire need of reforming the rules, but football is fine. If anything they should scrap the silly inactive player rule.

Or even better scrap blatter
 
I think removing the Offside rule could work, but it would need to be tested in competitve game conditions, and you can't just trial that kind of change in a competitive match, so I don't know how it would be tested.
 
the problem i have with the offside rule, is that it is actually humanly impossible to implement it.

how can you watch the ball to see when it is played whilst simultaneously watching to see if the attacking recipient is level with the last defender or not? its not possible to watch 2 places at the same time, especially if the ball was say 40 yards away or longer where the pass is being made to where it will land?

that split second for the linesman to turn and watch the attacking players could be enough to make it impossible to say whether the player was level, afterall, the linesman cannot see back in time...

hockey does have offside, but its based on a line and that the puck has to cross the line before the players before they can enter that zone. obviously a line is a simpler solution as the linesman can simply look down the line and determine whether ball or player crossed it first - though even then the ball might be hidden from view, but 2x linesmen pn each line (say a line half way between the halfway line and the 18 yard box at each end..so the ball would have to cross that to allow the goal side zone to become active to allow attacking players to move into it?)

that would stop 'goalhanging' but allow players to congregate between the half andf 18 yard line instead of being on the halfway line to remain onside...?
 
Nickg said:
hockey does have offside, but its based on a line and that the puck has to cross the line before the players before they can enter that zone. obviously a line is a simpler solution as the linesman can simply look down the line and determine whether ball or player crossed it first - though even then the ball might be hidden from view, but 2x linesmen pn each line (say a line half way between the halfway line and the 18 yard box at each end..so the ball would have to cross that to allow the goal side zone to become active to allow attacking players to move into it?)

that would stop 'goalhanging' but allow players to congregate between the half andf 18 yard line instead of being on the halfway line to remain onside...?
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Ice-Hockey has an offside rule, I don't think field hockey does :confused:
 
Removing the offside rule would be daft.

Would just result in even more long ball teams.

Teams could just leave a man up top, and hoof it up to them at any time.
 
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So while the football world debate the standard of refereeing, the lack of protection for clubs being taken over leaving them in severe debt, the spiralling money issues in the game including player wages, ticket prices pricing loyal and new fans out of watching their team, the double standards with regards to how rules and laws are implemented in different football associations..... FIFA are actually sitting down and thinking about abolishing one of the biggest rules in football. Jesus wept. Get Blatter and the rest of his cronies out of there.
 
Football exists on the whole these days as a form of spectator entertainment. A lack of offside would be terrible to watch, so I can't see this happening. I used to play a lot of hockey, and whilst the lack of offside rule there makes it fantastically fast, it also means that it's pretty poor to watch on TV.
 
The biggest problem with football at the moment is that officials are generally rubbish and make too many bad on-the-spot decisions, made even worse by the fact that managers aren't allowed to even criticise them without being slapped with a huge fine.

What football needs is a couple of challenges per match like in tennis/NFL etc. where managers can contest what they see as poor key decisions.
 
I'm not sure removing the rule would induce goal hanging at the top level. Teams defend with 11 men, and managers wouldn't plant a centre half in the 18 yard box because they would be a passenger for most of the game. Instead I think the changes to the game would be more subtle, pacey players lying a foot goal side of the defender, waiting for the ball over the top.

Defenders couldn't play such a high line and as a result would play deeper, and that would create more space around the pitch. I've actually thought about this in the past and thought it would be quite a good idea, although with it being such a fundamental change I don't think it will go down well with fans.

The best thing about it is that it will eliminate any offside errors which we often see have a huge baring on a result.
 
Tummy said:
Removing the offside rule would be daft.

Would just result in even more long ball teams.

Teams could just leave a man up top, and hoof it up to them at any time.
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do you not think they would try and counter this by maybe marking the player rather than leaving him free on goal?

offside isnt used in 5 a side or even 7 a side as far as i know, i reckon it would make the game a lot better.

also both teams could try the long ball if they wanted to, but for a long ball to work you need to have a striker who is talented enough to control the ball coming at speed in the air, therefore it would only work with decent strikers not rubbish ones. i would prefer to hoof a long ball up to tevez over crouch because at least theres half a chance tevez could control the ball rather than letting crouch stumble about trying to figure out where its going.
 
player said:
I'm not sure removing the rule would induce goal hanging at the top level. Teams defend with 11 men, and managers wouldn't plant a centre half in the 18 yard box because they would be a passenger for most of the game. Instead I think the changes to the game would be more subtle, pacey players lying a foot goal side of the defender, waiting for the ball over the top.

Defenders couldn't play such a high line and as a result would play deeper, and that would create more space around the pitch. I've actually thought about this in the past and thought it would be quite a good idea, although with it being such a fundamental change I don't think it will go down well with fans.

The best thing about it is that it will eliminate any offside errors which we often see have a huge baring on a result.
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some very well made points, especially about defenders and the more space it would create. its up to the defender to choose to mark you in the way he wants to.
 
The only improvement to offside instead of getting rid of it, is as someone has suggested, going back to if you're offside, you're offside, none of the current 'active' 'non-active' rubbish.

Saying that, it could be worse, it could be the 1920's again when there had to be three defensive members ahead of the attacker!
 
Psycho Sonny said:
some very well made points, especially about defenders and the more space it would create. its up to the defender to choose to mark you in the way he wants to.
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The problem is it would create space in midfield and cause LESS SPACE in behind the defence. The problem have you seen counter attacking football, its generally good, fast, great passing and lots of goals, have you seen it when Arsenal get stuck just outside the box unable to break down a defence and you're exposed to 90 minutes of sideways passing outside the opposition box with zero penetration, it makes for the most boring games alive.

Defences sitting back with 11 men behind the ball is already the single worst thing teams do in football. With no offside, the massive majority of teams would end up doing this for the massive majority of games, it would completely and utterly destroy football into an unimaginatively dull game of pure turdity.

THe offside rule isn't great, it needs slight tweaking, the active/inactive rule is fine but needs refining, to include things like, if you're anywhere even remotely close to the 6 yard box, you're active, if you're one side of the box and the pass is into the other, you wouldn't be but if you're within say, 10 yards of the pass then you'll be active. Clear and obvious limits so everyone knows whats going on. Its ludicrous when you get 3 people standing in the 6 yard box, someone shoots and a couple don't count as offside because they don't touch the ball, yet the goal keeper and defenders are positioning themselves based on where those players are.
 
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