Rethinking a previous post

It is more than a hypothetical. It has happened to me, once as a center referee back in 2017 in a Adult Open match (there is a post here somewhere about it) and now a couple of weeks ago in a youth DA match. It is the dilemma of whether handling by a defender can reset offside and allow that initially offside player to legally play the ball.

If you recall in the adult match, it was a play that was debatable (at least from what I recall all this time later) whether it was intentional or not as it was withing what I call the deflection range. Close enough where one might argue that it was a deflection. However, I remember that I felt that the defender was making himself bigger and took the risk. That ball, after the handling offense, went to a player in an offside position, my AR raises his flag and the player slots it in the back of the net.

We talked it over and decided to go with the handling offense. At that time, I considered it not intentionally played by the defender but making himself bigger. Now that I think about it more, that is terrible reasoning but it is what I decided at the moment.

This one happened in a DA match, U18 girls. The match was already 3-0 in favor of the team that had the chance to score. They are attacking in a 2 on 2 situation. Both defenders are in line and the attacker off the ball is in an offside position. The girl with the ball slots it between the two defenders and the defender closest to the pass tries to somewhat cover her chest but the ball travels about 10 yards. With her arms outstretched, it hits her arm and goes to the attacker who scores.

At halftime, the lead AR said that he thought the ball was intentionally played and the center said, but it hit her arm and so if the attacker was in the offside position, he would have called the handling. And we got into the discussion again of whether offside can be reset with a handling call.

The center argued that any other foul, like a tackle, would be called and not offset the offside. To which I countered that essentially, all other fouls are against an opposing player, not the ball or the game itself. At that time, I still had the thought that handling does reset offside, as it is intentionally played by the defender, played on as advantage and therefore no offside.

Anyway, we managed to confuse ourselves, we agreed with each other's points of view and then we finished out the match to an 11-0 drubbing.

So a couple of days later, I am an AR for an assessment match and the assessor said that he thought that you had to call the handling but that he would look into it. But he never followed up and so here I am, possibly still thinking that handling can reset the offside or even worse, I am right, and there are many others that are wrong, so perhaps I have to spread the word like the gospel among my brethren.

Before I go and make "Handling before Offside" T-shirts, let me know what you think in the comments. Do you believe offside is reset if the defense commits a handling foul before the ball gets to the offside positioned attacker? Do you have a position paper or some other documentation that hints to the answer? If either of the above questions pique your curiosity, please let me know. After all, we want to make sure that this darn blog climbs out of the doldrums of soccer referee blogging leaderboard.