Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to determine when a player in an offside position commits an actual offside offence.

Lesson Explanation

Building directly on the position-only question from the previous lesson, a player in an offside position is only penalized if, at the moment the ball is played by a teammate, they become involved in active play by: interfering with play (playing or touching the ball); interfering with an opponent (in a way that clearly impacts their ability to play the ball, including blocking their line of vision or challenging for the ball); or gaining an advantage from being in that position.

“Gaining an advantage” is a genuinely important, specific category covering scenarios like the ball rebounding to the player off a goalpost, crossbar, or opponent, or off a match official, while the player was in an offside position — a nuance that requires the assistant referee and referee to track not just the initial pass but the ball’s subsequent path.

A genuinely important non-offence: a player in an offside position who receives the ball directly from a goal kick, corner kick, or throw-in is NOT considered offside — an exception already previewed in Part 3, Lesson 3’s throw-in coverage, and now shown to apply identically to two further restarts.

The correct restart for an offside offence is always an indirect free kick to the opposing team, taken from the position where the offence occurred (the position of the offending player when they became involved in play, not necessarily where the ball was originally played from) — connecting this Law back to Part 2, Lesson 2’s indirect free kick category.

Practice Questions