Dean Smith, Aston Villa’s manager, received a red card and sent to the stand at their match with Manchester City, for protesting against referee Jonathan Moss’s decision, to allow Bernardo Silva’s goal. The offside law is often controversial but this showed its complexity.
City’s Rodrigo was in an offside position about 15 yards behind Villa’s Tyrone Mings. Mings stopped the pass to him, chesting the ball down.
He was bringing it under control. when Rodrigo came back and dispossessed him, then passed the ball to Silva who scored. There are two views of this incident, so let’s look at the relevant parts of the offside law.
First it says, it is not an offence to be in an offside position. A player in an offside position is only penalised when interfering with play by playing or touching the ball, or interfering with an opponent by preventing him from playing the ball or being able to play the ball, or by challenging an opponent for the ball.
If I had been the assistant referee, I would have flagged for that last one. Rodrigo did challenge Mings for the ball, coming from an offside position. But, would I have been right?
The law also says, that to become an offence, the ball must have last been played or touched by a member of the offside players team.
In this case we could see that Mings had touched the ball while trying to control it, before Rodrigo ‘robbed’ him of it. Some will quote the part of the law which says, an offside player who receives the ball from an opponent who deliberately plays the ball is not penalised.
But is this clause relevant? Introduced in 2016, it was to distinguish the difference between the ball deflecting off an opponent to an offside player, who would still be offside, and a defender deliberately trying to clear the ball but only succeeding in knocking it to the offside player, who would not be given offside.
As I say, this incident shows the complexity of the offside law. But who said refereeing Is easy?
By Dick Sawdon Smith
