Sounds like they’re thinking of implementing the “Wenger Rule” i.e instead of the attacker needing to be fully behind the defender to stay onside he can stay onside if he’s all but fully in front of the defender.
The idea is to give more an advantage to the attacker and disallow less goals.
To me it makes absolutely no sense, and I don’t understand how people buy into this kind of rule change not understanding that all it does is move the boundary for offside.
Those people who incessantly complain about “toenail calls” would still be whining with this new rule as an attacker has his heel keeping him onside by a cm.
The other thing I see with it, is it only makes it worse for an attacker to stay onside. Why? Because, with the current rule he can look down the line to time his run perfectly. With the new rule change, you can’t see what’s behind you and where your body is in relation to the defenders, so it’s only going to be more frustrating and luck based at times from the attacker’s perspective.
All in all, I don’t really see the point of this rule change. All it serves to do is move the margin slightly while potentially making things more confusing.
The current rule is perfectly fine. What we really need is automated offsides. We have the same concept when it comes to goal line calls and no one has an issue with the close calls there because they’re called correctly 99.99% of the time, so what’s the issue with having the same for offline calls? Get the technology in now and be done with it.
The purpose of the rule is to score more goals. That’s it.
The knock-on effect will be less high line defending as defenders will find it harder to step up on the offside trap. This in turn will beget more bunker-type defending, which will drive down scoring and make the game more boring as teams pass the ball around the arc over and over and over again.
I fail to see how scoring .0368143 more goals per game is worth it.
It wouldn’t make it worse for the attackers to stay onside. If he still looks down the line the way he does now, there will be a greater chance of staying onside. He won’t play hoping to keep just his foot onside, he will still play trying to keep his whole body onside and if he fails using that strategy, his chances of being onside with the new rule is greater.