Offside Defensive Deflection vs. Defensive Play
 

OHSAA local rules meeting last night yielded the typical annual offside discussion. Most controversial topic was the ball played by the attacking team and "contacted" by a defensive player.

Scenario 1:
Attacker A1 plays through ball in the direction of A2 who is in an offside position. Defender D1 reaches toward the ball deflecting the ball, but not enough to redirect the ball. The ball continues to A2. Offside or no.

Scenario 2:
The same except Defender D1 jumps and barely flicks the ball with their head in the same direction. Offside or no.

I say offside because A2 is in an offside position at the time the ball is played. In either case the contact with the defender is irrelevant. I wouldn't buy it that A was not in a position to play th eball had it NOT been contacted by the defender. Seems like the way you describe it says that A2 was in the play. My flag goes up if I am the AR.

Below I have copied from the USSF "askareferee" website. If your association meeting was High School referees, it should be pointed out to them that NFHS's explanation diagrams are copied, with permission, directly from FIFA/USSF. So you would have solid evidence that NFHS intended that at least on Offside, FIFA/USSF instruction is approved.


USSF answer (October 6, 2009):
The U. S. Soccer Federation sees no reason to change its answer of October 29, 2007:

“Deflections by any opposing player do not affect the status of a player in an offside position; the attacking team’s player must be called offside if he or she becomes involved in play (as defined in Law 11). Unsuccessfully ‘making a play’ for the ball does not establish possession. Nor, for that matter, does successfully ‘making a play’ for the ball if it then deflects to the player in the offside position who becomes involved in play.

“Note that there are differences here between ‘being involved in play,’ ‘playing the ball,’ and ‘making a play’ for the ball. (As noted above, see Law 11 for involvement in play.) ‘Playing the ball’ in these circumstances means that the defender (in this case the goalkeeper) possessed and controlled the ball. However, if the defender possessed and controlled the ball badly, it’s still ‘making a play,’ but if it wasn’t possessed and controlled, it wasn’t played in the sense you suggested in your scenario.

“A rule: Being able to use the ball subsequent to contact equals possession; deflection is not possession.”

To this we might add only that it takes seeing the action to make the call correctly, because, as you discovered, the very words used to describe the event are biased toward one or the other possibility

In your situations did ether defensive player play the ball to the point of control?

In both cases, offside in both NFHS and FIFA/USSF. The defense has to have obvious control of the ball, and in both cases they were not able to get full control of the ball. A deflection of any sort does not cancel any offsides.

Certainly the way I call it. I was very surprised at the percentage of referees with a different view on these.