Understanding The Offside Rule is Easy

Offside limits how far and forward opponent's players may be when involved in play.

Understanding the offside rule may take you some time but don't worry, you will never be like me.

It took me a year to figure out why everybody was shouting OFFSIDE! every time I touched the ball!

I am also the record holder of Guinness Record Book for running offside most times in a game!

Offside

Take a look at this picture. If your position in a match is like the blue spot on the left of the diagram then you will be standing/running in offside.

As you can see you will be both in front of your opponent's last player and the ball.

One of the most running into offside players is Filippo Inzaghi that currently plays for Italian giants AC MILAN.

If you study his movements you will notice that referee sometime misses that he is standing offside which is pretty strange and you may wonder why?

This is because referees like all human beings make mistakes and you should not get disappointed if the referee make the same mistake at your match because deciding if it is offside or not is sometimes impossible (at least not with human eyes).

Keep in Mind

Here are some more things to keep in mind about offside:

You will be in an offside position if you are:

You will not be in an offside position if you are:

There will be ne offside offence if you receive the ball directly from:

If you are playing forward there will be many situations that you find yourself running in an offside trap.

This kind of trap simply means that your opponents leave you behind the dotted line on picture just before the ball is played to you.

But this kind of trap seem to fail often under a match but to avoid it try to be one yard behind your opponent so when the ball is played and if you are fast and defenders slow then you will have many opportunities to score goals.

Summary

This is probably the most difficult soccer rule to grip and in the beginning of your soccer career you may feel overwhelmed!

In order to get a better understanding of the rule I recommend you to study soccer both live and on TV.

For example: Note what other players are doing when trying to avoid the offside trap.

If you are playing defender in your team try to study how defenders are reacting and test what you have learn on the next match.