Question Number: 25559

Law 11 - Offside 10/6/2011

RE: Adult

Yufeng Lai of Shanghai, Shanghai People Republic of China asks...

To whom it may concern,
Do you remember the second goal of 'Swizerland 2:0 South Korea' game of 2006 German World Cup? In that goal, the assistant referee raised the flag demonstrating the offside of one Swizerland player but the referee insists no offside when one swizerland player having been in offside position scored the goal after the ball was passed by his team-mate towords him and rebounded from opponent(South Korean) player. But according to Page 109 of 'Laws of the Game' issued by FIFA, the situation in which the shot by a team-mate(A) rebounds off an opponent to attacker(B) who is penalised for playing the ball having previously been in an offside position, the incidence above I have described at first is typical of an offside offence. Do the referee of the 'Swizerland 2:0 Korea' make a correct judge?

Answer provided by Referee Joe McHugh

Hi Yufeng
Not sure why this has come up again but the call here in my opinion was a great decision made by one of the best referees in the game Mr Horacio Elizondo (Argentina) who indeed went on to referee the final.
When the ball was played by the Swiss player, his team mate was in my opinion in an onside position as determined by the rear foot of the last Korean player. The ball was not intended for that team mate but it was then played by a Korean defender to the player who by now had now moved /been placed in an offside position. That cannot be offside.
I suspect also that the AR believed that the ball was either deflected by an opponent or last played forward by a Swiss player in which case it would be offside.
The referee was well placed here to see the play unfold and I would say that the decision could have indeed marked the referee out as a potential final referee as he made the brave correct decision to award the goal when perhaps others would have 'accepted' the flag and ruled it out.
Finally it is the referee that ultimately makes all decisions regarding the game and he can accept or overrule an AR as he sees fit.

Answer provided by Referee Dennis Wickham

You may recall that the the FIFA referee committee concluded that the referee had made the correct decision and selected him to referee the world cup final.

The decision was controversial because referees rarely exercise their power to overrule an offside flag in a world cup event. But, it is the referee's judgment that matters. The issue for the referee was whether that the defender had made a deliberate play on the ball with the slide tackle (not offside) or whether the ball had deflected off the defender (offside). While the assistant referee is in the best position to judge offside position, the referee is usually in the better position to judge the actions of the defender (deliberate play or deflection). Here, the referee's position was ideal.

The referee's judgment was that it was a deliberate play, and given the high skill of the Korean player, the decision was correct.