How is this Alexander Isak ‘goal’ offside? Worse than Liverpool??

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The Mag

·24 December 2023

How is this Alexander Isak ‘goal’ offside? Worse than Liverpool??

Alexander Isak made a brilliant debut for Newcastle United.

The Sweden international scoring a class opening goal and then an even better one to send Newcastle United on their way to a very rare away victory at Anfield.

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Only for VAR to somehow rule he was millimetres offside when starting his run just inside the Liverpool half, before putting two defenders on their backsides and finally delivering a sublime finish. Instead of 2-0 and all but certain victory, that game ended in a late late defeat.

Well. I think this Alexander Isak one on Saturday was even worse.

Where is any of this offside???

I have studied this still for ages and no matter how hard I look, I can’t even see anything of Alexander Isak that is beyond the last defender.

That is even before we get to how we have arrived at this ludicrous situation, where goals are now disallowed for offside, due to somebody examining video stills for minutes with a magnifying glass.

Surely if you are having to get that magnifying glass out, it already tells you that in reality these ‘goals’ should never be disallowed for offside.

VAR was brought in to stop the cheats diving and to correct clear and obvious errors. It wasn’t brought in to correct clear and obvious errors with a magnifying glass.

I have read stuff before that says / shows, that which camera still they examine can have a massive influence, as in when the person makes the pass, in a split second there are a number of stills that could be used as the boot (usually) makes contact with the ball and before the ball leaves the foot. So, the choice of video still can make all the difference, even if only millimetres…

Drawing these lines is ridiculous. Numerous cases already that afterwards show even the lines haven’t been drawn correctly. The automated offside calls used at the Qatar World Cup and elsewhere, seem the obvious thing to use, yet the Premier League choose this odd combination of technology AND then the naked eye with the magnifying glass. When it is such small margins it is simply ludicrous to be relying on the human eye. To me it is the equivalent of goal-line technology that decides whether the whole ball has crossed the line for a goal, we rely totally on the technology, we don’t then add on somebody sitting in a prefab in a car park hundreds of miles away to also check it with the magnifying glass.

To my knowledge, offside was brought in the early days of football as we know it, to prevent a striker simply standing all match on the edge of the opposition area.

With the introduction of VAR and its use for offsides in particular, it was never intended to end up like this, such all but invisible margins looked at. Back in the days of relying simply on the linesmen / assistant referees running up and down the line, you could have situations regularly, where relying solely on the naked eye, meant that inevitably loads of offsides were called wrongly by massive degrees.

Watching Match of They Day you would see replays that showed wrong offside calls more than five yards wrong. If a defender / goalkeeper launched a ball downfield, by the time the assistant referee shifted his / her gaze from watching that, to looking at the attacker and last defender, both of them could have ran five yards or more in opposite directions. So for example, the striker running towards goal and the defender running towards the halfway line. It used to drive you nuts but you just had to accept it because the match officials were only human and couldn’t have the necessary accuracy all of the time, we shouldn’t have to accept this new situation where things have so badly gone in the opposite direction…

Stats via BBC Sport:

Luton 1 Newcastle 0 – Saturday 23 December 3pm

Goals:

Luton:

Townsend 25

Possession was Luton 35% Newcastle 65%

Total shots were Luton 16 Newcastle 15

Shots on target were Luton 5 Newcastle 2

Corners were Luton 6 Newcastle 7

Referee: Darren England

Attendance: 11,042 (1,100 Newcastle)

Newcastle team v Luton: