Laurent Dubois devotes around 10 pages of The Language of the Game to describing how soccer’s offside rule has changed over the decades. “Negotiating the offside rule is one of the most complex and absorbing features of the game both for strikers and defenders, an intricate dance that involves positioning and timing of the most nuanced kind,” he writes. “To appreciate and understand this dance is, on a basic level, to appreciate and understand soccer.” If anything, Dubois understates the case. The offside rule is the very heart and soul of what we aficionados, in exalted moods, call “the beautiful game.” Please bear with me as I explain this.
At the risk of oversimplification: The offside rule decrees that a player may not pass the ball to a teammate unless, at the moment of the pass, two members of the opposing side are closer to the goal than that teammate. Imagine that you are a soccer player with the ball. You look up and see a teammate all by himself, no defender anywhere around him, 30 yards from the goal. All you have to do is loft the ball in his general direction and he’ll be playing one-on-one against the goalkeeper. But you can’t. Instead of rejoicing in a scoring opportunity you’re annoyed with your teammate for being so far out of position.
Almost all of the wonderful patterns and geometries of soccer are generated by this one rule, which also generates something that many non-fans greatly dislike: a paucity of goals. But soccer fans get exasperated when goals flow too freely. Scoring should not be easy, and, as with gold and diamonds, there’s a link between rarity and value. The true fan delights in players who have not just the physical gifts but also the imagination to circumvent the rules that seem designed specifically to prevent scoring.
One of the most famous moments in the history of soccer occurred in the 1970 World Cup, in a semifinal match between Brazil and Uruguay. Brazil’s forward Tostão has the ball on the left side of midfield and looks up to see his teammate Pelé to his right, running full-tilt toward the goal. Tostão has to make his pass quickly, before Pelé gets past the Uruguayan defenders and is therefore offside. He makes it: a beautiful long curling roller. But the Uruguay goalkeeper sees the danger and comes rushing out to clear it. Pelé continues at top speed, which is very fast indeed, and it looks like he may just beat the keeper, but that there will surely be a terrible collision between the two men—and then—a millisecond before the inevitable crash—Pelé alters course slightly to avoid the keeper and the ball, which rolls right on diagonally across the pitch. You can’t watch the scene without catching your breath, and only then do you ask: How did Pelé even think to do that?
But what happens then? Well: Pelé darts over to the ball, torques his body to take a tightly angled shot at the now-empty goal—and misses.
Again, this is one of the most famous moments in the history of soccer, and it ends in a missed shot. I do not believe that there is another sport in which a play that ends in a failure to score could be so celebrated. But the stroke of mental brilliance that precedes the miss is so remarkable to soccer fans that the former eclipses the latter. (By the way, Brazil went on to win the match and then, in the final against Italy, the World Cup.)
It might be easy to conclude that soccer is the sort of game that you either get or don’t get, yet Laurent Dubois takes up the noble and difficult task of trying to make soccer comprehensible and interesting to people who are used to games that follow a different logic. It’s a task he handles very well.
At the risk of oversimplification: The offside rule decrees that a player may not pass the ball to a teammate unless, at the moment of the pass, two members of the opposing side are closer to the goal than that teammate. Imagine that you are a soccer player with the ball. You look up and see a teammate all by himself, no defender anywhere around him, 30 yards from the goal. All you have to do is loft the ball in his general direction and he’ll be playing one-on-one against the goalkeeper. But you can’t. Instead of rejoicing in a scoring opportunity you’re annoyed with your teammate for being so far out of position.Almost all of the wonderful patterns and geometries of soccer are generated by this one rule, which also generates something that many non-fans greatly dislike: a paucity of goals. But soccer fans get exasperated when goals flow too freely. Scoring should not be easy, and, as with gold and diamonds, there’s a link between rarity and value. The true fan delights in players who have not just the physical gifts but also the imagination to circumvent the rules that seem designed specifically to prevent scoring.
One of the most famous moments in the history of soccer occurred in the 1970 World Cup, in a semifinal match between Brazil and Uruguay. Brazil’s forward Tostão has the ball on the left side of midfield and looks up to see his teammate Pelé to his right, running full-tilt toward the goal. Tostão has to make his pass quickly, before Pelé gets past the Uruguayan defenders and is therefore offside. He makes it: a beautiful long curling roller. But the Uruguay goalkeeper sees the danger and comes rushing out to clear it. Pelé continues at top speed, which is very fast indeed, and it looks like he may just beat the keeper, but that there will surely be a terrible collision between the two men—and then—a millisecond before the inevitable crash—Pelé alters course slightly to avoid the keeper and the ball, which rolls right on diagonally across the pitch. You can’t watch the scene without catching your breath, and only then do you ask: How did Pelé even think to do that?
But what happens then? Well: Pelé darts over to the ball, torques his body to take a tightly angled shot at the now-empty goal—and misses.
Again, this is one of the most famous moments in the history of soccer, and it ends in a missed shot. I do not believe that there is another sport in which a play that ends in a failure to score could be so celebrated. But the stroke of mental brilliance that precedes the miss is so remarkable to soccer fans that the former eclipses the latter. (By the way, Brazil went on to win the match and then, in the final against Italy, the World Cup.)
It might be easy to conclude that soccer is the sort of game that you either get or don’t get, yet Laurent Dubois takes up the noble and difficult task of trying to make soccer comprehensible and interesting to people who are used to games that follow a different logic. It’s a task he handles very well.
by Alan Jacobs, Weekly Standard | Read more:
Image: Trinity Mirror / Mirrorpix / Alamy
