WC Play So Far

mattywizz wrote:

PurplePrideTrumpet wrote:I picked a good day to get up early and watch.

Oh to live on the west coast and work normal people hours. I am up for 3 hours before the first game starts...What channel was the Mexico-France game today? Somehow my DVR didn't record it. Maybe it got bumped for "House Hunters" or a syndicated episode of "Law and Order:CI." Was I the only one pulling for Korea to tie that game up today and get Argentina to force it offensively? That is one talented team up top.

must be you programming skills. It was on ESPN.

mattywizz wrote:What channel was the Mexico-France game today?

Nevermind. ESPN2. Figured it out myself. Edited the series record to pick up all WC channels.

ESPN.com is showing it was on the Deuce...maybe because of the golf.

hmmm both games were on 206 Direct TV.

Geezaldinho wrote: .... Hernandez may have been a step offsides. ....

Question for the swami of all rules: If Hernandez' feet were even with the defenders, but his upper body was leaning forward past the defenders, was he offsides? When I saw the replay -- although not stop framed -- it looked to me like only his upper body was leaning past the defenders, but his feet were on the ground exactly even with theirs.

UPSoccerFanatic wrote:

Geezaldinho wrote: .... Hernandez may have been a step offsides. ....

Question for the swami of all rules: If Hernandez' feet were even with the defenders, but his upper body was leaning forward past the defenders, was he offsides? When I saw the replay -- although not stop framed -- it looked to me like only his upper body was leaning past the defenders, but his feet were on the ground exactly even with theirs.

Well, SoreKnees is an actual referee...

But the definition of an offside position includes any part except the hands or arms. I think the AR is supposed to give the attacker the benefit of the doubt.

PPT responded while I was searching for wording, but he's exactly right

In the context of Law 11 – Offside, the following defi nitions apply:
• “nearer to his opponents’ goal line” means that any part of a player’s
head, body or feet is nearer to his opponents’ goal line than both the
ball and the second-last opponent. The arms are not included in this
definition

http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/affederation/generic/81/42/36/lawsofthegame%5f2010%5f11%5fe.pdf

Now, you always hear that "even is on" but I i think that's only an inference from a strict reading of the law (11)
I haven't seen that actually stated anywhere.

Fifa has also been a bit obscure about whether a player has to actually touch a ball before he can be called offsides if another on sides player touches the ball first, but that's a different issue.

I think the issue in this call wasn't so much the rule, as it was that the defender was running away from the goal, and Hernandez was running towards it, making it pretty hard for a linesman to see both when the ball was played and when/if the offsides occurred.

Even the announcers weren't sure until the slo-mo replays. Then of course, they termed the call "egregious". It was a call I think could have gone either way. If you play the trap, sometimes those calls don't go your way.

In the studio Klinsi and McManaman thought the center back made a mistake even trying to spring the trap, then made another by stopping and waiting for the flag that never came.

the play is at about 1:29 of this video. In stop motion, he's clearly off, but in real time it's pretty fine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFxUVWIBl8k&feature=player_embedded



Note also that the #1 has a player directly in front of his line of sight and his head is turned towards the ball, so it was only the linesman's call.

I'm not calling this a referee gaff, I'm calling it a 50-50 call. The refereeing in this world cup has been remarkably good so far. Besides, the penalty was so egregious it didn't matter.

I'm not so sure. Look at the defender's left foot in relation to the artificial shadow line. Then look at the attacker. It looks like the defender's left foot is slightly on the "dark" side of the line whereas the attacker is entirely on the "light" side of the line. But, there also is the camera angle to consider.

On looking at the picture, it looks to me like the attacker is on sides because of where the defender's left foot is.

UPSF,

tha law I quoted is

any part of a player’s
head, body or feet is nearer to his opponents’ goal line

clearly, his whole head and torso are nearer to the opponents goal line than the defender's feet.

the law is a little poorly written, it that it defines the offensive players parts but not the defenders, but the interpretation I see at the minimum is that any of the offensive player's parts can't be closer than the defender's closest part.

don't forget, it isn't until the next frame that you can see start of separation on the ball from the kicker, and on that frame, they took the offsides highlight off. I'm not sure there is actual separation yet, he looks like he has a long foot.



Like I said---50-50 call.


I looked up the frame rate on youtube, and it's usually 30 fps. so what we see happened in about .033 seconds. Then I looked up the human eye saccad rate (eye movement) and the response to an unexpected stimulus is around 200 millisecs (1/5 sec)- the fastest is 20 millisec if you are panning with foreknowledge.

So even if the call was right, we're somewhere in the region where a ref who has to move his eyes probably can't always keep up with the motion. you'd have to go 5 frames before you could be sure the ref should have seen both parts of the field. and I don't think theres a way to focus on both at once. peripheral vision isn't that good.

Looking at a different angle, here's the first frame you can see the ball (at the defender in blue facing the camera's left foot)
Before that, the defender closest to the camera blocks the view, so you'd have to say it's on the kicker's foot.




The two players involved in the offsides call were moving away from each other pretty fast. somewhere in the last two pictures I posted (1/30 second) was the call.

contact?





I dunno, the defender sure dragged his foot, but I gotta think a ref could call that either way.
I'm with whoever said trying to pull a trap was a mistake, regardless of the actual facts.

Klose with a Red. Serbia with a goal and 1-0 lead at halftime. This could shake things up a little.

Germany lost.

But USA has set itself up for the heroic comeback of World Cup history.....

Down 2-0 and not marking and playing long ball won't do it.