Law 11: Offside

Unfortunately, the offside rule is probably the single hardest rule to wrap one's head around. I'm going to describe  the official wording of the rule, then run through some examples of what is and is not offside using diagrams.



The rule

An attacking player is considered onside if either or both of two conditions are true:

- There are at least two defending players between him and the goal (this includes the keeper)
- The ball is between him and the goal, regardless of the number of defenders.

In the following examples, we're going to pretend that the blue team is attacking, and that the red team is defending.

In this first example, the blue player is onside - there are at least two defensive players between him and the goal.

In this second example, the blue player is also onside - though only one defender is between him and the goal, he is behind the ball and therefore onside.

In this example, the blue player is offside. He has stepped past the last defender, and because he doesn't have the ball in front of him his side would be called for offside. When offside is called, the defending team is granted a goal kick, meaning the goal keeper takes a free kick.

When the offside rules was first instituted, it was very strict and hard for attacking players to get through; the number of defenders behind the ball needed to be three, not two, for an attacking player to be considered onside. As time has gone on, the rule has been progressively weakened in order to allow attacking players a better chance of scoring.

Other scenarios to know about with offside:

If an  attacking player is level with the second defending player, the attacking player is not considered offside. In this example, even though there is only one defender between blue and the goal, blue is considered onside because he is level with the second to last red player.

An attacking player cannot be offside in his own half, even if there aren't enough defenders for a traditional onside call. In this example, blue is still onside even though there is only one player between him and goal, because he is in his own half. If one of his own players puts a long pass into the opponent half, blue could play it all the way on to goal.

A player cannot be offside if his team does not have the ball. In this example red is in possession, and so blue is not considered offside even though he would normally be so. If blue's team gets the ball back he would be flagged for offside.

Lastly, a player can only be flagged for offside on a scoring play if he is considered to have influenced the play. In this example, one blue player has the ball while the other is offside. If the blue player with the ball goes on to score, the goal would be allowed to stand, as long as the offside player doesn't participate in the play.

The offside rule is one of the most important things to take into account when designing attacking and defending tactics. In order to get good shots from up close, a team needs to have some way to get their attacking players onside, so that their players can get up close. A defending team can use the offside rule to try and trip up their opponents. We'll discuss these tactics as we get further along in our discussion of the game.