Explanation Of The Offside Rule

The Offside Rule - Soccer rules are for the most part very easy to grasp even by someone that's watching the game for the first time in his life. You foul someone, you get penalized. You hit him in the box, his team gets a penalty. The ball goes beyond the marked area, it's an out throw. Everything is really pretty basic, except for the soccer offside rules. This one can be a bit tricky and until you get more than just a simplified explaination of it, there is usually cause for confusion. So, I'll try to explain it a bit.

The offside rule only applies to attackers and it is meant to regulate both team's positions on the field of play. Without an offside rule, an attacker could simply park themselves right in front of the goal in order to receive balls and try to score. Before the offside rule, this practice would pin down the defenders and make them unable to play anywhere else outside their own penalty box. A striker could virtually being the pace of the game to a standstill by simply lazying off in front of the opponent's goal.

Now that you know WHY soccer has an offside rule, let's take a look to see exactly what it is and how it works.

There are two phases of the offside soccer rule: the offside position and the offside trap sanction. If an attacking player is in an offside position, he will only be penalized if the ball is heading towards him AND he has an intention to play it. Otherwise, if he makes no move for the ball and in no way is able to take advantage because of his position, he will not be called, despite having a clear offside position.

An attacker is in an offside position if he is closer to the other team's goal line than the ball AND the second last opponent. Usually, this is the goalie and one of the goalie's teammates. But it doesn't have to include the goalie, just 2 defending players and the ball.

So let's say that team "Black" is attacking and "Green" is defending. The ball is at the feet of Black's midfielder and the Black attacker is a few meters further to the Green team's goal line, than the last Green defender. Then the Black attacker is in an offside position, but the referee will only call an offside sanction if the Black midfielder passes the ball to the Yellow attacker while the latter is in the offside position.

The very best way to understand the offside rule is simply to watch a few soccer games.  Until your child is about 13 or 14 years old, you'll find out that there are a whole lot of soccer players who don't completely understand the offside rule.  So you don't have to feel ignorant if you don't grasp the rule, but it would probably be best to remain quiet on the sideline (if you are a parent) until you get this thing down pat!