Van der Vaart's free kick comes in deep to the back post; Buffon swats it away with his left hand, knocking down his right back Panucci in the process. Panucci stays down beyond the end line as the ball comes down for van Bronckhorst. Van Bronckhorst then rips a shot that is poached into the back of the net by van Nistelrooy, who is clearly behind the defense. Offside right? No! Everyone has forgotten about Christian Panucci. He is still sitting behind the goal.
Any player beyond the endline counts as if they were on the endline, otherwise players could just dart off the field and force an offside position. Similarly, attacking players could hang out just beyond the goal line and then skip back on to the field after the ball is played. This rule is regularly enforced for players in the goal, but this sort of scenario rarely comes up.
The vertical replay that ESPN keeps replaying does not have Panucci in the picture. From that angle, van Nistelrooy clearly appears offside. However, Van Nistelrooy is clearly at least 5 yards up the field from Panucci. Tough to blame the Italian defense that assumed they had left van Nistelrooy in an offside position and great field awareness (or just good fortune) from van Nistelrooy to realize that he was not.
17 comments:
Comment edit: Obviusly you do not know the rules... Panucci is not trying to be part of the play, he is injured off the line and still holding his head while the ball gets into the net. If a player is injured and off the field by the FIFA rules is not considered in play...
There are a few problems with your interpretation of the rule.
"Panucci is not trying to be part of the play"
1) The question of whether or not someone is a part of the play is irrelevant for the defensive team. The offside rule states that an offensive player must be a part of the play to be offside, but this stipulation is irrelevant for a defensive player. A defensive player must merely be in the game to be relevant when making decisions about the offside rule.
"he is injured off the line and still holding his head while the ball gets into the net"
2) It is irrelevant if he is holding his head, bludgeoning a camera man, or knitting. FIFA makes no reference to head holding when defining the offside rule.
"If a player is injured and off the field by the FIFA rules is not considered in play..."
3) This statement of yours is fundamentally correct. If a player is injured and off the field, he does not factor into any offside decisions that are subsequently made. However, this rule refers to players that are given official recognition of an injury and are off the field receiving treatment. For example, let's say Luca Toni is fallen by a vicious tackle from Boulahrouz just before halftime. Toni has to come out with a minor injury, but Donadoni does not want to use a sub before ascertaining whether Toni will be able to continue. Technically, Toni is still in the game, but obviously his presence behind the Italy goal should not factor into offside decisions. That is the scenario the rule you refer to is talking about. Panucci was not "injured and off the field" in a technical sense. He was holding his head and happened to be outside the lines of the field. The location of the injury is completely incidental. I am curious, do you believe if he was knocked down just a few feet away on the end line, would the goal stand? What is your substantive explanation for the difference between being knocked down on the end line or a few feet beyond it.
Put more succintly, 1) members of the defensive team are always in play with regard to the offside rule, unless they have been removed from the playing field; and 2) Panucci had not been removed from the playing field, he was just lying outside of it. Therefore, there is no offside and the goal stands
Mr. Garland, your honor, i believe i must appeal your court's decision. without an official acknowledgement of Panucci's injury, he is considered to be on the goal line, thus making any Dutch player on the field onside.
Sincerely,
Ben, esq.
Ditto Ben. The interpretation of the linesman in this case is faulted, because he is "unable to determine whether Panucci’s intentions were to purposely step off the field, in order to put Van Nistelrooy offside" (quote from the president of the Italian referee association, Cesare Gussoni).
If he was “unable to determine” that, he should have given the benefit of the doubt to the defense (as referees are instructed to do in these cases)!! Panucci got run over by Buffon! How on Earth was he intentionally stepping off the field to put RVN offside??? Makes no sense.
At the moment of GvB’s shot, Panucci is clearly off the field and not participating in play anymore. As such, he should not have been taken into consideration for the offside rule.
No doubt there was no offside position, the interpretation of reffere was right. Pannuci was participating in a game.
first and foremost, I didn't see Panucci getting any medical attention, so the 'injury' seems to be an old Italian 'drama'!
It is up to the ref to decide if there's medical attention needed for an injured player, no matter if he is on the field or off the field. This means that the injured player has permission to 'leave' the Field of Play!
A victory for beaurocracy over common sense. The rule was changed to prevent players deliberately staying off the field of play to prevent playing the opposition onside and, as such is a good rule modification.
In order for the player not be the in the play, he has to officially be recognized by the referee as not being in the play. This typically happens after a stoppage in play when a player is attended to or taken off the field.
A person that has fallen down on or beyond the end line is still in play until the play is stopped and he is officially recognized as being no longer in play by the referee. Until then, the end line becomes the offsides line.
This goal was correct.
Well gentleman, what ugh says " In order for the player not be the in the play, he has to officially be recognized by the referee as not being in the play" is the key. The ar and the ref could not make an instant decision to stop the game and declare Panucci injured, they never do in such a short time so again, if you are asking me I think the ref was not sofisticated enough to think all this in a split of a second and to tell you the truth I think the did not even realized Panucci was off the line. I think the ar just did think that RVN was in line with the defenders to begin with....just my opinion looking at the way the game was directed by the ref.... but if somebody thinks Italy lost because of this questionable call then he is plain wrong.
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=544855&cc=5901
UEFA has officially spoken on the matter. The goal was onside.
Money quote from UEFA general secretary David Taylor: "Taylor told reporters: 'Even though the Italian defender (Christian Panucci) was off the field because of his momentum, he is still deemed to be part of the game and is therefore taken into considersation as one of the last two defending players.
'As a result Ruud Van Nistelrooy was not nearer the opponents' goalline than the second last defender and therefore could not be in an offside position.'
'This is a widely known interpretation of the offside law among referees but is not generally known by the wider footballing public and indeed many people in football,' he said."
you "forgot" to mention that he also said: " He conceded, however: 'The Law itself does not deal with this situation directly at all,' but said that referees universally interpreted it in the way that the officials did on Monday night. See the word "Interpreted" it says all...
This is a proud moment in Absolute Stunners' history. A real live celebrity, Julie Foudy, under the commenter name of "garlandpr," has found the blog and taken interest in this argument. After having each of her points systematically shat on by the good doctor and then shattered by UEFA, referees, other commenters, and her colleagues, Foudy/Garland has decided that the best course of action is to complain that the way referees have UNIVERSALLY decided to interpret a rule for this situation and situations like it (granted it was not made with this particular situation in mind) is irrelevant, and "holding his head" is a clear sign that he has been officially acknowledged by the ref to be out of the game. That "unsofisticated" [sic] (seriously, that was the worst possible word for you to not know how to spell) ref!
Also from today's telecast:
Foudy: But, I mean, he was out of the play, like, Buffon is BIG!
Ben, Esq. YOUR HONOR or whoever you are... sorry you are wrong, I am not Julie Foudy, sorry but I do not follow ESPN Telecasts, they are ridiculous. Since I can understand them, I follow German, French, and Italian telecasts, can you?
Sorry YOUR HONOR again for making some grammar error while wasting my time responding to you from my handheld, it will not happen again. This is the last time here…
FYI I have a name, last name and a title that I DO NOT need to use like you do on open forums....
Let's try to keep the comments civil. Thanks everyone.
Aah Monsieur Garland, por que estás tan enojado? you are your honor, not me. you see, at first I assumed you were the Honorable Merrick Garland before your true identity came out. I accept your apology for your regrettable mistake, and hope you have enjoyed learning about il calcio during your stay here. Do you know my actual first name? Last name? Title? (I'm not a lawyer or an esquire of any kind). In conclusion, bang bang feuer frei. Vai toma no cú!
Love,
Ben
What an absolute load of rubbish. Football is a game and if rules and regulations are going to be followed so strictly then there are and have been more mistakes than could be counted. Example the penalty mutu got vs italy, have you ever seen a cross into the box when defenders and strikers aren't puling one anothers shirts, i haven't, so why was this a penalty when others haven't been? Its ridiculous. As far as VNR's goal is concerned, this is an even worse case of people being ridiculous. Well before the cross came in panucci was on the ground, if he wasn't injured he could have got up and retreated to play VNR offside easily, but he was injured so he couldn't. Lets put this another way, if a dutch player is injured near the corner flag of his own goal and del piero is stoood on the 6yard line and the ball is on the halfway line with the dutch defenders, if someone intercpts it and passes to del piero is he onside or offside, he's offside because the player who is injured can not contribute to the game. So if he can't contribute physically why should the position of his body contribute, especially if he is injured and not in the pitch.
It's about time football did the same as rugby and started using video replays to help with major decisions.
Dan
Post a Comment