Offside: Good or Bad?

            One thing that is hard for many people that don’t know a lot about soccer but like to watch it sometimes to understand is offsides. While I don’t want to discuss the rule or how it works, I do want to look at how it changes the game. Often, people talk about how soccer takes a long time and moves slowly, with a low goal count per game and little action. While I disagree with the slow and low action part of it, I do understand that more goals could be more exciting. They go on to say that they believe that offsides is what slows the game down and creates a lack of goals. I have had friends suggest that removing the rule of offsides and decreasing the size of the field would create a much more intense game that would catch on faster in places like the United States and become more popular. I can see where they are coming from with this belief, but I can’t say that I fully agree with them and their suggestions.

            First of all, there is a sport that is soccer without offsides and a much smaller field, or court, which is often referred to by indoor soccer or is truly called futsal. With five players on a side including a goalkeeper, futsal is played on a basketball-sized court and lacks an offside rule. Generally, this is a faster paced game based on creativity and skills which is what many want out of soccer. However, futsal is a completely different game than soccer, with different tactics, rules, and most importantly, fans. Later, I will discuss the importance of fans to a sport and their role in shaping it.

            In defense of the offside rule, it does what it is said to be meant to do, by stopping the attacking team from cherry-picking, or leaving someone down at the other side of the field waiting to receive a ball dumped from his own defender. Without this rule, defenders would just get the ball in their half and play long balls down the field to a waiting player. It would just go back and forth like this, and any beauty or old tactics in the game would be lost. You might ask why this would matter, and if it makes a better and more action-packed game then why it would be a bad thing. This leads me back to the fans. Soccer is the most popular sport in the world with around 3.5 billion fans around the world. These fans are accustomed to offsides, and they love the game they support. Fans are the ones who go home and play the sport after the game. Fans are what make the game, because they play the game, and the game they play is soccer. Anyone who has been to a soccer game, or even watched one with some other fans, knows the excitement that a goal brings, or the disappointment that the lack of one brings. The fact is that the reason that they are fans is because they love the game and all of its parts, and the reason that people aren't fans is because they don’t love it, and there’s no way of changing that besides creating a completely different sport.