You’ve crossed a line!!!

I’ve put a line in the sand!!!

The addition of all those exclamation marks tells you that those metaphors are ser-i-ous!!! Not to be trifled with. You generally cross any ‘line’ after due consideration or at your own peril. It’s the nature of lines.

None more important offside ‘line’. Yes, it’s a line. Well it should be. If you draw a line across the pitch at the precise point of the last defender’s heal, possibly his arse, if its sticking out, or just very big, maybe even his head if he’s flat out on his back. But the very most ‘rear’ point of the very last defender is the offside line. Any part of any attacker which is nearer to that defender’s goal than that line when the ball is moved forwards, is offside. Be that part a boot, a toe-nail, a head or one single hair. Simple.

So you’d think.

Yet, with all that modern technology can offer, those imbeciles at the VAR central office, those neo-zombies, hopefully soon the first casualties of AI, take 10 minutes to decide whether this was the case or not. You could ‘draw’ 25 million ‘lines’ in that time. And you only need one. It is, quite frankly, ruining the game. Goals are celebrated with the usual mass hysteria (the reason we go to football matches) and then removed. It takes one tenth of a second to take that ‘1’ off the scoreboard. But up to a lifetime to lose the upset resulting from it. You can’t ‘uncelebrate’.

But wait! There’s a solution!! Because too many goals are disallowed because someone is offside by less than half a millimetre. And that’s not what the offside rule was ever about.

So Gianni Infantini, boss of FIFA, sucker up to Trump, worthless slap-head and yet-to-be-convicted-of-corruption head of all football, has an idea. Actually, it’s an idea we must all thank Arsene Wenger for. He calls it the ‘clear daylight rule’. And claims that the purpose of offside is to prevent ‘goal-hanging’, even though Gary Lineker got away with it for a decade or more. What we need is a new interpretation of the rule. One in which you’re offside if there is ‘clear daylight’ between the striker and defender when the ball is put through to him.

In other words, we need a new line. The last part of the last defender remains the same, BUT, this time, its the attackers heal or elbow or maybe back of his head, which needs to be at least in line with that defender’s ’bit’. Same as when a ball crosses the line. As in tennis, if any part of the ball is on the line, it’s ‘in’.

So this indeed changes a lot. Ish. It puts the attacker higher up the field. Which is… errr… well, higher up the field.

But a line’s a line. And those tossers at Stockley Park aren’t very good at lines. And all it really does is shift the inevitable rows from the front of the attacker to his back. Which basically; won’t change a thing. It’ll just move it a bit.

What we all really want is a bit of ‘latitude’. A bit of understanding. Lose the purely scientific and apply some human emotion to it all. Basically; if it’s my team, that was never offside. If it’s the other team; he was a mile offside. Wherever you draw your fucking lines.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx