The offside law is one of the most controversial and complex laws in football. Despite being a fundamental principle of football, it is often responsible for the cancellation of goal attempts — something that, naturally, leaves the refereeing teams under fire after a difficult decision.
In Qatar, where the new semi-automatic offside technology is implemented, in which the ball has sensors and sends information directly to the VAR, the World Cup started immediately with one of those controversial moves. Five minutes into the match between the hosts Qatar and Ecuador, the refereeing team, obviously advised by the VAR, decided to cancel a goal by Félix Torres in an offside Valencia game earlier in the play.
Cameras, sensors on the ball, sending data 500 times per second: the new offside technology being implemented in Qatar
Despite the decision and the Ecuadorian victory, and with the added difficulty of interpreting the offer, the question remained: Why was Félix Torres offside? A question that, in the hours and days that followed, gave rise to various considerations and publications on social networks that questioned the suitability of the arbitration team and the veracity of the irregular position indicated. One of them came from a post on Instagram, arguing that “corruption started early.” “Five minutes were enough to show that this World Cup is a farce,” adds the author of the mail????????
However, contrary to what was stated in the publication, the offer was well cancelled. However, according to the current Laws of the Game published by FIFA, “a player is in an offside position if: any part of the head, body or feet is in the opponent’s half of the field (excluding the midfield) and any part of the head, body or feet is closer to the opponent’s goal line than the ball and the penultimate opponent.”
In this specific shot, when the free kick went into the penalty area, Félix Torres shared the play with goalkeeper Saad Al-Sheeb. The ball fell into the hands of Michael Estrada, who handed it back to Torres for an assist on what would have been Valencia’s goal. However, the first time Torres touches the ball, Estrada got ahead of the penultimate opposing player, who was Abdelkarim Hassan.
The confusion generated came from the fact that, in the vast majority of cases, the last and penultimate opposing player was the goalkeeper and another specific element. In this offer, however, the goalkeeper went to the penultimate element of Qatar, with Michael Estrada marked offside for having his foot in front of Hassan.
conclusion
Michael Estrada was even offside when Valencia scored, as he was ahead of the penultimate Qatari at the time of Torres’s pass. Soon, the goal was well disallowed by the refereeing team.
Thus, according to the Observer classification system, this content is:
WRONG
In Facebook’s rating system, this content is:
FAKE: primary content claims are factually inaccurate. This option generally corresponds to “fake” or “mostly false” ratings on fact-checking sites.
NOTE: This content was curated by The Observer as part of a fact-checking partnership with Facebook
Source: Observadora
