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.
I’ve always been for simplifying offside to feet. Attacker’s front foot vs defender’s back foot. The whole point of offside was to prevent not only goal hanging but also preventing attackers from getting a head start on runs in behind. To me, it’s all about feet, and while leaning over is conceptually offside, it just seems counter to common sense.
I think feet are the worst way to judge because they are the fastest moving part of the body and there are two of them. An attacker could be onside then offside then onside then offside then onside again before finally being offside as both players running alternates who has a foot furthest forward.
Also, feet are smaller and much harder to see for a linesman who could be 50 metres away, and 0kayers could both be wearing the exact same pair of identical yellow Nike boots which would make it almost impossible.