Question Number: 30611

Law 11 - Offside 7/16/2016

RE: Any Other

former youth ref of Hordaland, Norway asks...

This question is a follow up to question 30609

(To assist with other readers' navigation #30609 was intended as a follow-up to #30594).
I quite agree that this is the spirit of the game outcome if the attacking team starts a new attack without having lost possession. I would be loth to do so though, as errors in law are protestable. (Although I doubt the teams would expect the offside call.)
I also agree that the referee has no options in my penalty shootout question (#30610), but I would certainly not think a DQ a too harsh punishment for the deliberate case (the tournament is presumably in the knock-out stage).

Answer provided by Referee Joe McHugh

Hi
Only misapplications io the Laws are protestable. An error in opinion which happens all the time is not. I could not see any protest bring considered on an offside call. There would be so many variables in there plus matters of opinion that any protest would not be considered. I could not see how an attacking player that has got back onside for another phase of play being considered offside and I believe the Law deals with a very unusual situation which as I said previously rarely if ever happens now. Most if not all players return to the FOP immediately as part of playing movements. If it does happen it is more likely to be the defenders that do this and again it happens mostly as part of playing movements with perhaps a tardy return. I can only recall one such situation ever that I came across this and it came to nothing.
As a final point at the lower levels if the game referees usually give pre match instructions to ARs which includes missed offside flags. The instruction that is typically given is that if the ball is cleared away over half way with play continuing the unseen flag might be best dropped. In the past I have dropped unseen flags when of the opinion that pulling the game back was not the best decision for the game.
At the higher levels I suspect that referee bodies will have their own advice of the instructions.

Answer provided by Referee Peter Grove

While errors in law are protestable, as the previous questions/answers on this point would tend to illustrate, this is an area of law that could be seen as subject to different interpretations. So much so that I think this would really be more a case of the referee's opinion or interpretation of the law rather than anything else.

In my experience, only cases where the referee has done something that is basically 'impossible' under the law, are normally subject to overturn on appeal.

In fact the only referee technical errors that I can remember being overturned on appeal in recent years were two examples of offences at a penalty kick when the referee awarded an indirect free kick to the opponents instead of a retake for encroachment by a team mate of the penalty kick taker, and where the penalty kick had entered the goal.

What is interesting is that in one case (a World Cup qualifier) FIFA ordered the entire game to be replayed whereas in the other, which was a UEFA women's U19 competition, UEFA decreed that the game should be replayed from the point at which the incorrect decision was made, which just happened to be in added-on time with less than three minutes left on the clock.