麻豆传媒

SOCCER fans and players should stop telling linesmen to get their eyes
examined. They can鈥檛 help making errors when judging offside.

A player is offside if, when the ball is passed, there is only one member of
the opposition鈥攗sually the goalkeeper鈥攂etween him and the goal he is
attacking. To find out why match officials so often seem to get offside
decisions wrong, Ra么ul Oudejans and his colleagues from the Free
University of Amsterdam asked three professional linesmen to assess 200
potential offside situations, which they also videoed.

This showed the linesmen made 40 mistakes. They raised the flag 26 times when
the attacker was alongside the second-to-last defender鈥攚hich the rules
deem to be onside鈥攁nd kept it down 14 times when the attacker was beyond
this defender.

Oudejans says he can explain this ineptitude. In 90 per cent of the cases the
linesman was a metre beyond this defender, rather than exactly in line. 鈥淭his
distorts their perception of the situation drastically,鈥� says Oudejans. From
that angle, attackers standing on the far side of defenders appear to be in
front when they are actually alongside. And attackers between the linesman and
defender can be up to a metre offside while appearing in line with the defender.
Analysis of 200 real football matches confirmed the pattern.

Oudejans says this perceptual limitation makes the task of the linesman
impossible. Offside situations should be judged from the stands, where the
perspective is much better, he says.