Every time VAR gives another marginal offside, the frustration is the same. A blurry freeze-frame,
an imprecise line, and an attacker judged offside by millimetres.
Raheem Sterling against West Ham United, Son Heung-min against Leicester City and Ajax’s
Quincy Promes against Chelsea.
It happens almost every week now, provoking the accusation that the offside law has been
broken by VAR.
But the facts speak differently. Offsides are at an historic low and falling. Maybe
that is why they are so frustrating now when they do happen? It feels more like an arbitrary
imposition than it ever used to.
Back in 1997-98, according to Opta, there were 7.8 offsides per Premier League game.
In 2005-06 that dropped to 6.3 and by 2013-14 it had fallen to 4.2. Last year it was as
low as 3.8. And this year the trend has continued, with a fall to 3.65.
Where the Premier League leads, the lower divisions follow. In the Championship offsides
have dropped from 4.7 per game in 2013-14 to 3.1 last year. In League One from 4.6 in
2013-14 to 3.5 this year. In League Two from 4.7 in 2013-14 to 3.6 this year.
And this is not just an English story. The 1986 World Cup had 7.6 offsides per game,
1990 had 8.5, and 2018, the first VAR World Cup, just 2.7. Draw up a list of the most
offside men at any given World Cup and the only two from this century are El Hadji Diouf
with 18 at 2002 and Thierry Henry with a heroic 19 from 2006. Everyone else is from the 1960s,
1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
Those years were the golden age of offside. But now the laws have changed, and so has
the game. It is more organised, more technical, with less of the risky ambition that sees
the flag go up. For a new generation of fans, offside is no longer a feature of the game,
but a bug.
To be offside you have to run in behind. Everyone has in their mind a picture of a classic offside:
the forward runs too soon, the defenders hold their position, and when the pass comes, the
linesman’s flag follows. But modern football is different. That run is fading out of the
game.
It is according to someone who built a career around it, at least.
“People don’t do that as much anymore, running in behind,” Darren Bent told The
Athletic. “Everything is to feet. The only one I can think of, who will get in behind,
who is brilliant at doing it, is Jamie Vardy. It’s become unfashionable, but it’s so
effective because defenders don’t really expect it.”
If you draw up a list of the most offside players in Premier League history, Bent would
be near the top. From 2006-07, the earliest time for when this specific data is available,
he has been offside the third most in the league, with 276, behind only Jermain Defoe
(314) and Emmanuel Adebayor (328).
But to speak to Bent about this is to learn that being offside is not a failure, it is
just the price you pay for the gambles that do come off. “Someone who runs in behind
as much as I used to do, you’re going to get caught offside a lot. Because you’re
always running that risk, you’re always treading the line. But you’re banking that
you’re going to get one right, two right a game, and you’re going to get a couple
of goals from it,” he says.
Bent explains that the key, as well as bending and timing your runs, is to put the external
frustration or criticism out of your head. To keep playing your dangerous game even when
people on your side want you to slow down.
No-one who watches modern football would say that pace has gone out of the game. Players
are quicker and more athletic than ever. But now the pace comes from different places.
Teams do not hit early balls over the top for a centre-forward to chase. Instead, they
are more likely to play a 4-3-3 or a 4-2-3-1, and have a No 9 who comes short and wants
the ball into his feet. It is very different from the 4-4-2 traditions of the English game.
In modern football the pace does not tend to come from a striker gambling in behind
the centre-backs. “A lot of the time that’s the key to it,” says one Premier League
coach. “The 9 might be coming shorter, and the runs in behind come from wide areas.”
Raheem Sterling, Son Heung-min, Dan James, Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah are the best
examples, but most Premier League teams now have wide players who run in behind from deep.
And the men who are being caught offside — far less often than their equivalents 10 years
ago — are still centre-forwards, even slow ones.
The most offside men in the league last season were Chris Wood, Glenn Murray, Vardy, Gerard
Deuolofeu, Aleksandar Mitrovic and Raul Jimenez.
Modern football is leaving offside behind, and nothing proves this point better than
Burnley. Sean Dyche’s team are an old-fashioned throwback in how they play: physical, direct,
4-4-2. They are traditionalists.
They were also the most offside team in the league last season, being caught 106 times.
The season before they were second-most, with 100. The season before that, back on top with
101. That is what happens when you play 20th-century football in the 21st century.
So it should be no surprise that Wood — an old-fashioned English-style centre-forward,
even if he is from New Zealand — has been the most offside man in the Premier League
this season. Just as he was last season as well, 53 times, well ahead of second-placed
Glenn Murray (38). He leads the line, runs the channels, tries to get in behind. He is
very good at it. But Roberto Firmino he is not.
As teams change how they attack, so do teams change how they defend. The offside trap that
we all remember was a necessary protection against the impatience of the game.
“I remember back to watching and playing football in the 1990s,” says Matthew Upson,
the former England centre-half. “A lot of the time you would win a tackle and your first
pass would be over the top. You’d play forward a lot earlier and more often. Teams don’t
play as many longer passes as what I grew up playing.”
“I remember in the youth team at Luton, there was so much emphasis on turning teams,”
Upson remembers. “Managers weren’t as worried about keeping possession. They’d
rather get that territory, turn a team, win a throw-in in their final third. The amount
of times you’d have to run back as a defender, clear the ball into the stands and regroup.
This was true at the very top of the game too. Being well-organised and able to push
up in unison was the best defensive tactic. It worked for Arrigo Sacchi’s AC Milan,
masters of the old offside trap. Their meticulous organisation, allied with brilliant individual
quality, allowed them to set new standards in the game, including a famous triumph over
Barcelona in the 1994 Champions League final.
But defences cannot play that way anymore. The 2005 law change redefined what it meant
to be “interfering with play” in an offside position, namely that a player either had
to touch the ball, or represent a “potential for physical contact” with a defender.
The law created a huge field of activity in offside positions. Players could freely run
offside and not receive the ball, only to be legally passed the ball by an onside team-mate
in the next phase. Suddenly the offside line was no guarantee for a defence any more. Attackers
could break it and still hurt them.
So defences had to think differently. If you can now be hurt by attackers behind you, it
might be safer to keep them in front of you instead.
Defences have become more flexible and more willing to drop deep. “The Premier League
has become very tactical with lots of teams playing in low and medium blocks when out
of possession,” says one Premier League assistant manager.
“Teams aren’t really looking to play an offside trap game as they used to in the 1990s,”
says another Premier League coach. “It seems to have become almost redundant in the Premier
League.
And that, more than anything else, explains the decline in offside. Football has changed
faster in the last 20 or even 10 years than anyone has realised. The old end-to-end game,
of turning teams, getting in behind, and trying to catch them offside, is dying at the top
level.