{"id":157020,"date":"2025-11-24T12:53:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T12:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/157020\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T12:53:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T12:53:07","slug":"ex-referee-calls-for-law-change-after-liverpool-offside-incidents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/157020\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-referee calls for law change after Liverpool offside incidents"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former Premier League<\/a> referee has called for clarification of the offside law after Murillo\u2019s goal against Liverpool stood on Saturday. <\/p>\n

Against Man City<\/a>, Virgil van Dijk<\/a>\u2018s headed goal was disallowed by the VAR after it was deemed that Andy Robertson<\/a>, who was standing in an offside position, interfered with play when ducking out of the way of the ball.<\/p>\n

However, replays showed that Robertson wasn\u2019t in Gianluigi Donnarumma\u2019s eyeline and the goalkeeper probably wasn\u2019t even aware of the Scotsman until the ball was past him.<\/p>\n

A similar scenario ensued this weekend in a couple of matches, both with different outcomes. <\/p>\n

Murillo\u2019s goal at Anfield stood and in this writer\u2019s opinion, rightly so, because Alisson<\/a>\u2018s view wasn\u2019t obstructed by Dan Ndoye, despite him being in an offside position.<\/p>\n

So, Liverpool were the test animals and now the problem has been rectified, right? Wrong.<\/p>\n

Arsenal<\/a>\u2018s second goal against Tottenham<\/a> was perhaps the perfect example of how players can impact a goalkeeper while standing in an offside position, but this wasn\u2019t ruled out.<\/p>\n

Eberechi Eze\u2019s strike found its way through a crowd of bodies, with goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario\u2019s hand not strong enough to keep the ball out. <\/p>\n

He likely would have saved the shot, though, if Martin Zubimendi and Leandro Trossard hadn\u2019t been blocking his view while standing in offside positions.<\/p>\n

Going by IFAB\u2019s own definition of offside, this goal should have been ruled out.<\/p>\n

Some of the definitions of offside provided by rule-makers IFAB are:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Preventing an opponent from playing or being able to play the ball by clearly obstructing the opponent\u2019s line of vision or<\/p>\n

\u2022 Challenging an opponent for the ball or<\/p>\n

\u2022 Clearly attempting to play a ball which is close when this action impacts on an opponent or<\/p>\n

\u2022 Making an obvious action which clearly impacts on the ability of an opponent to play the ball<\/p>\n

Speaking on Sky Sports<\/a>, former Premier League<\/a> referee Dermot Gallagher said: The grey area for this kind of incident is too wide. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are at the behest of the officials on the day. It\u2019s so subjective and it is too loose. There is no defining barriers like handball.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you tighten this up, people might not like it, but we\u2019d accept it. At the moment, people are saying this has happened to our team this week and this has happened to our team this week.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gallagher may say the law is currently too subjective, but the definitions provided by IFAB make it quite clear that if an offside player is blocking the goalkeeper\u2019s line of vision, then offside should be given.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former Premier League referee has called for clarification of the offside law after Murillo\u2019s goal against Liverpool…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,12172,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-157020","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-referee","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}