Question Number: 27367

Law 11 - Offside 4/28/2013

RE: semi-pro Adult

vit kozianski of shenzhen, guangdong china asks...

a free kick is given (it matters not if direct or indirect) before the kick is taken the wall is the required distance away however an attacking player has positioned himself in front of the keeper, the kick is taken, is the player offside, (he is impeding the keeper this i am sure of) but is he offside???

Answer provided by Referee Joe McHugh

Hi
Being in an offside position is not an offence. That player has to do something more such as touch the ball or interferes with an opponent.
If the referee or assistant referee deems that the player in an offside position has interfered with an opponent's line of sight to the ball in this case the goalkeeper when the shot has been taken then that is offside. That can only happen though when the ball is played not before. So a player could stand in line with the ball in an offside position but the ball must be played for the offence to be considered.

Answer provided by Referee Jason Wright

There are 2 parts to determining offside - first, deciding if the player is in an offside position (and it sounds like he was - though it depends, naturally, on the position of the other defenders), then we need to determine if he was actively involved in play.

In this scenario, assuming he doesn't touch the ball, we're looking at 'interfering with an opponent'. If he physically blocks the keeper from moving for the ball then this is an easy decision - but if he isn't, and is just standing there, then we need to consider whether he's blocking the view of the keeper.

If he has blocked the view of the keeper from the ball (say, a shot crosses in front of this offside player and into the net, meaning he keeper has lost sight of it briefly), then this would still be interfering with an opponent.

If the ball doesn't even make it to the goal, or goes over the goalline without the keeper being involved, then we wouldn't consider him to be actively involved in play.

Impeding the progress of an opponent is an entirely different offence, and involves actively making some movement to block the path of a player off the ball. Standing in a position while the ball is still out of play cannot be impeding.