On Sun, Jun 20, 2010 at 9:40 PM, Brad Beam <[email protected]> wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- From: PGage > > (though I still can not decipher what they mean by off-sides, and it is >> unclear to me what a tackle is, and which ones are legal and which are not). >> > > The attacker must be the closest offensive player on an active play -- > i.e., not on a restart -- to the goal, given at most two defenders. Any > non-attacker closer to the goal is considered offside. It is only a whistle > if the non-attacker becomes directly involved in the play. It's similar to > offsides in hockey, except the "blue line" is tied in to the position of the > attacker, the "puck" is any other offensive player, and it is not an > automatic whistle. > > A tackle is any play resulting in the active dispossession of the attacker > -- i.e., not a shot on goal. The tackle is legal as long as the defender is > going after the ball and not the attacker. Of course, certain moves which > the put the attacker at risk for injury are whistled as illegal. > Thanks, this is helpful (I have never understood hockey either, so that part doesn't really help). Part of what is confusing about the off-sides is that they keep saying that sometimes a player is off-sides, but that it does not really count as off-sides. This has seemed ad hoc to me, and your explanation helps clear that up - though it still seems kind of subjective as to what constitutes becoming "directly involved in the play". It seems like I have seen offensive players standing around picking their nose near the goal who don't seem to be actively involved in the play, then suddenly find the ball near their foot or other body part and try to knock it towards the goal. If this guy is not considered off-sides, what is to stop a team from pretending that a stray offensive player is not involved in the play, even though secretly he is? Also, there was a play today with the "All-Whites" where the announcers at first thought he was off-sides, but on replay decided he probably was not, because the pass between two attackers first hit off of a defender. This sounds like an offensive player without the ball can be closest to the goal without being off sides as long as a defender touches the ball before he does. In this case you could station a player in an off-sides position and then try to "bounce" the ball off of an unsuspecting near by defender to the off sides offender. It sounds like you are saying a tackle just means taking the ball away from the offensive player, not necessarily a physical contact that brings the offensive player with the ball to the ground (like in American football). That helps. But sometimes physical contact that does bring the offensive player to the ground is a foul, and sometimes it is not. And sometimes the penalty for this foul seems just to be that the other side gets the ball, and other times the penalty is more severe, giving the other team some kind of free kick (sometimes directly at the goal, sometimes not). And sometimes the offending tackler gets one of those embarrassing yellow cards, which, if he gets a certain number per game, or perhaps per round (I have not yet decided which, or how many), he then gets suspended for all of the next game. You seem to be saying that the determining factor is how much of the physical contact was incidental to the defender going after the ball, and how much risk of injury the move put the offensive player at - both of these seem to be pretty subjective judgments - especially on such a large field, with only 1 (that I can tell) real official, who seems to have two lesser assistants (though I am not sure what the limits of their authority is). This part seems a lot like the "flagrant foul" rule in basketball, which is also rather subjective, and the source of some controversy in the NBA. Indeed, in many respects soccer seems a lot more like basketball than American football - including the threat of "flops" and what looks very much like the Lakers' (well, Phil Jackson's) triangle offense. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
