The offside rule exists as a measure that encourages creative football. Through its modern application, it’s come to the surface as a vexing idiosyncrasy, but it’s a necessary evil.
By drawing a line that’s defined by the last defender, the game of football ensures that teams don’t simply park their respective busses leaving a gaping expanse in the middle. Such a setup would surely see each team waiting for the attacking progression at the other side to run its course, before promptly Ederson-side-windering the rock across 60 meters of tumbleweeds for them to try their hand at scoring. The law forces teams to move with their teammates (keeping the action dynamic and players near the ball) and strategically constrict space as a means of constraining the opponent, thereby birthing countless methods for deviously toying with this all-deciding line, for the attackers.
And while we’ll certainly reserve space in the Museum of Modern Touchline Theory Thoughts for a compendium of attacking strategies that involve dancing along the offside ruler, I recently stumbled upon a group of players that may also benefit from a little know-how in these parts of the football jungle: defenders.
These guys set the trap themselves, yes, and there are undoubtedly plenty of coordination efforts that go into drilling a well-oiled offside machine, but I’ve found that they can sometimes limit their own usage of the idea. It’s got more potential than what’s being used.
In fact, there is a key element in the attacking toolbox that can actually be applied quite neatly to defenders–and if used correctly, it can both catch more opponents offside, and create a more intelligent back-up plan in the case the original one doesn’t pan out.
Alright, enough handwaving! Let’s dive into the example that sparked this.
In the short clip, above, you’ll have found an awfully common scenario, on both sides of the ball. Paris have made a name for themselves as a team that, when pinned against formidable opposition, a la 11 Bavarians, tend to spring threatening counterattacks lead by none other than the French prince himself. In their efforts to execute this strategy, the speedy roadster often gets tangled with the offside line. His burst of speed and subsequent technical proficiency once he catches up to the ball are a storm most find hard to weather, leaving defenses with little choice but to plan accordingly. Some will sit back to avoid the footrace, but UCL titans Bayern Munich are unlikely to concede space with such respect.
That very club, donning the red jersey in our clip, has also become well-known for their impressively high defensive line. They’ve been exposed before, and ultimately were in this tie, but the approach has largely worked. The German outfit was an unstoppable force on their way to the trophy last year, suffocating teams by granting practically no space whatsoever. If you play the entire match in the opponent’s half, what’re the chances that they’ll ever score?
But besides the missed call, what was most jarring in the video above, for me, was Benjamin Pavard– highlighted below, in red.
Why? We now enter the frame-by-frame breakdown.
Di Maria drives with the ball, with Draxler and Neymar as central options that Bayern would ideally look to press. As was easily decipherable from the first leg, and as seen in the image below, Hansi Flick’s strategy was to suffocate the central creative players, happy to leave wide attackers with space to roam.
The main difference between the two above scenarios is that the alternative PSG option in screenshot 1 isn’t one that strays away from goal (diverting the ball to the outskirts of the field), but rather one that drives right towards it, in Mbappe.
Thus, Boateng and Lucas Hernandez are caught between two minds, each. The former, having originally considered being the first man to close down Neymar, but now worries about Kylian’s darting run, and the latter, unsure as to how he ought to apply his cover shadow as he initially leaps forward and then sidesteps to attempt to close the lane down the line.
But the man that sees everything and knows the French prince well from his time with National Team is our friend Benji. The entire time Boateng and Hernandez are scrambling to make decisions, he watches Mbappe and knows precisely what’s about to happen. Even worse, he recognizes that he’s overstepped the half field line–now calling into play the offside rule they rely on so much.
So what does Pavard do? He knows what Mbappe is capable of, so he does what countless defenders resort to in this identical situation: balance-beaming.
In having gone too far already, Pavard makes a hopeless effort to pump the breaks on all his backtracking momentum. And good luck with that!
He’s already in too deep–having tugged the offside line back beyond where his teammates are aiming to hold it, and is caught in no-man’s land. The ball is about to be delivered, and instead of charging back at full speed, with his best chance of catching up to Mbappe, he’s grinded all of his progress to a halt. Pavard performs a delicate balancing act that feels like the right thing to do here, perhaps to avoid seeming like he didn’t try to keep the line fixed, or desperately hoping that the attacker will have mistimed his run, or the man on the ball, his delivery–but it’s ultimately quite perplexing.
Pavard even proceeds to skirt back an inch, praying that the linesman will enjoy the moves he typically saves for the club as he pops his behind out in hopes of earning the slimmest of margins. At last, he finally arrives at what might be easily described as the worst conceivable starting position for a 50m dash.
If I had to make a mad sprint out of a building, I certainly wouldn’t want to start half perched atop a stool. Not only has Pavardinho shot himself in the foot with his initial mistake, but now he’s got no chance to even make up for it.
And here we see the consequences of his actions! In digging his heels into the floor, the threatening pass is allowed to travel over 5 meters before Pavard even has the chance to react. He’s still booty-poppin’ and has entirely squandered what was once a head start, and is now a detrimental ignition position.
By the time our poor guy even gets set in running stance, the ball has travelled between 10 and 15 meters. Di Maria has nearly caught up to Lucas Hernandez, Neymar and Draxler are at full speed, and Mbappe is already a full 2 strides in front. If we convert that to human strides, Pavard has effectively lost the race before it’s even started.
You can rewatch the clip, animated, below, to see the impact of Pavard’s mistake. Highlighted in red, he pulls back the line without Boateng realizing, creating a miscommunication that leaves Mbappe with an advantage. Bayern need a miracle to save them now.
Luckily for Bayern, that miracle did in fact arrive. A falsely called offside flag saves Pavard from the embarrassment of having to explain his Olympic beam athlete impersonation. His overzealous mistake could’ve proven costly, but his tip toed effort could have been even more demoralizing. In the case that Mbappe had slipped through, not only would have have help open the door for him, but he’d have shut it before even letting himself in. The blame is two-fold.
Thus, we have to envision a better way of dealing with such scenarios.
This is undoubtedly specific and nit-picky, but success lies in the sum of the details. This occurrence is largely common. Many teams put so much emphasis into holding their line, that they tend to force their best back-up plan (what could’ve been Benji, here), into playing themselves out, completely. This brake-screeching technique is seen all over, and especially at the top level where the margins are thin and the cameras are always flashing, but there’s a small nuance that may allow defenders to avoid it altogether–and we can find it in precisely the same clip.
The astute striker that Kylian Mbappe is, he’s performing a classic attacking run that looks to circumvent the offside trap: what I like to call skiing. If it hadn’t been for that erroneous call, he may have slid right on to a gold medal.
I’m not a winter sports guy, myself, but this move is awfully reminiscent of the slalom alpine events I’ve always watched, mouth agape, at the Olympics. Athletes fly downhill at breakneck speed, as they dodge in and around poles set up as obstacles. Depending on the tournament, if you miss even a single gate, you might find yourself disqualified–just like a runner that didn’t skirt onside before a pass was kicked, may hear the whistle blown. To really draw out the analogy, and in case you aren’t familiar with this snowy event, here’s an artist’s rendition on my tactical whiteboard. Just pretend the keeper has two thin boards beneath his feet, instead of studs.
Here’s the Mbappe clip, reduced to his perceived field of vision (Pavard-free), with the ski run in full form:
Acting as if there’s a pole he must bound around right when the ball is kicked, Mbappe does precisely what Pavard does not: skiing along the offside line, maintaining his alpine-level speed, before popping past the flag at exactly the right moment. He borrows the idea from the mechanics of the icy, downhill gliders who compete in a sport in which halting to a stop like Benji did would shave critical milliseconds off their runtime (assuming it didn’t already cause a wipeout). A margin that fine could be the difference between proudly landing on the podium or returning home without any hardware. It’s the same fractions of an instant that can determine whether you prevent a promising attack, or fall prey to it. In the age of VAR, a fingernail can make the difference.
Needless to say, Mbappe isn’t the only one that clearly watches the Winter Olympics. He’s far from it. Nearly every sharp-minded attacker skis to avoid the traps defenses place. Literally, as I sat in my living room, Sunday morning, watching Manchester United complete their comeback against Aston Villa while drawing up the animations you see above, I saw this very idea unfold before my eyes–perpetrated by none other than the off-the-ball-movement-King: Edinson Cavani. Check it out:
The Uruguayan does the same exact move: skiing along the offside line as it switches from Mings to Matty Cash, and exposing his positional advantage only when Bruno releases the cross at the offside check is made. He doesn’t get too eager. He builds up speed in the defender’s blindside, channelling it laterally before a slight change of direction punches through the line the second it’s no longer relevant. In doing so, he sets himself up such that the trailing defender is, well, trailing, and has no chance to contest the header.
Cavani’s movement is in the same direction in which he wants to ricochet the ball, and he’s flying at it. For anyone familiar with how momentum is transferred between objects, invoking its conservation–i.e. a bowling ball colliding with a tennis ball–the speed at which the resultant projectile shoots off in the opposite direction is a function of the mass of both parties and the velocity at which they initially travel. A high velocity, large-mass Cavani impacting a high velocity, small-mass ball means he’ll need little else besides the contact itself to smash it home.
A low velocity Cavani that didn’t ski intelligently (imagine Pavard’s move, applied to the attacking third) would have needed to conjure up that “speed” with some other method, in order to achieve the same powerful header. Examples of this might include flinging his leg sharply for a volley, or lunging forth for a diving header–both of which are significantly harder than simply sprinting at pace. By holding onto his forward momentum and simply curving his run, instead of stopping altogether to avoid being “off”, Cavani manages to elegantly net his 8th in his last 7 matches.
Furthermore, and swatting away the brief physics detour, it’s Toying with the Line 101. Regardless of the substitute teacher you pick–be it Mbappe, Cavani, Higuain, Ronaldo, Aguero, Lewandowski, Griezmann, Kane–the concepts are apparent everywhere. All the top attackers in the world are excellent at doing this. Even if they don’t view it through the same granular lens that I use, it’s a truth they behold, intrinsically.
Thus, my proposition here, is that Pavard and the countless defenders I’ve watched hopelessly balance-beam to keep attackers offside, take a leaf out of those very attackers’ book.
Just as a striker may adjust the curvature of their run to dip around an imaginary slalom pole, defenders should use the same reference point (their deepest-lying teammate that defines the line itself) to maintain their sprint speed while traveling along the offside band. As soon as the ball is played and the VAR snapshot is taken, you burst away just like Mbappe did–and now the race is even. Sure, the competition may be quicker (who knows if Pavardinho would’ve caught up to Kylinho, in any case), but at least you haven’t given him such a debilitating head start.
I’d be foolish if I didn’t admit that this may feel a bit unnatural at first, given that the defensive unit itself sets this boundary for .. itself. But, if one designated player serves as the North Star, typically the one that has their blindside exposed to a run in behind (i.e. Mings, in the Man U example), then others around him can adjust accordingly.
In doing so, the line is set by one player, while their compatriots play with it. There’s no blindside switching and dragging-back of the line that leaves blinded players on an island–like both Boateng and Mings in the earlier clips. Instead, the line-setter remains confident that they are, in fact, the “last defender”, without compromising their positioning because of an overzealous misstep made by someone else.
The tracking defender that engages the runner in the subsequent dash will also have held onto their precious speed instead of shooting themselves in the foot by stopping to preserve the line’s integrity. No wobbly gravity-fighting, here.
So now, when proposed with the challenge of maintaining speed while respecting the trap, these newly sophisticated defenders pause and mutter out, “porque no los dos?”, alluding to the big-brain skiing nuance that achieves both defensive benefits, instead of neither. They recognize the importance of preserving the team’s offside line, while simultaneously creating a more promising back-up plan in case Mbappe (or his replacement) still times things to perfection. Having earned their place atop the small throne of tactical edge, our players really dial into that last point, for poetic emphasis, and remark something to the effect of “… defensive skiing prevents a runaway train from running away.” How lovely.
Yet, in the specific case in which the half line is invoked (like the Bayern-PSG catalyst studied above), there’s another intriguing twist.
The half field line, on its own, can also act as the North Star. It’s basically just a player placeholder. All defenders can now ski along before bursting onto the racetrack, without even needing a focal point. It’s also something that doesn’t move, meaning it’s easier to see and keep track of as a reference than Ben having to decide between Jerome or Lucas as the line-setter.
With that, we’ve now got a much more effective way to hold our line than relying on each other to all be in sync. Just look at this thing:
An added and honestly underrated bonus is the flexibility of this approach, too. If you sprint to the offside line like Pavard and try to battle gravity as it tries to topple you, forward, there’s little wiggle room in terms of pass-delivery timing. If Di Maria fakes the pass with one foot and delivers it a second later with the other, Benji’s nose will have already plunged itself in the dirt like a garden spade. We might be able to maintain that balance for a moment, but hanging in limbo, arms flailing, will feel like an eternity.
A delay in the kick is much easier to cope with if we defensively ski. The solution? Instead of teetering on a tightrope, we just keep running along the offside line. We maintain speed. We preserve the barrier. It’s much more fool-proof. Realistically, we can keep doing this thing forever, skiing right along until the pass is actually made, and it’s so much more effective than reviving the mannequin challenge.
Of course, this fledgling concept isn’t free of weaknesses. An immediate thought of mine, for instance, is that there is certainly a case in which skiing along a curved path could draw a defender too far out of position to actually catch up with a runner, especially if they’re behind them. This loophole points to a particular caveat when utilizing defensive skiing: the one tracking the runner must ensure that both the attacker and ball are in full view.
If not, we see the above scenario. Skiiers must always pick up runners that are between them and the ball, rather than blindsiding themselves.
But in large part, and if this specific nugget of spatial awareness can be effectively imbued, defensive skiing can drastically overhaul a side that relies heavily on the offside trap.
Watching one of the world’s best teams that specializes in this very tactic, commit errors like the one poor Pavard has seen dissected to no end here, makes me think that there’s quite a handful of sides that could employ this form of inverted logic.
By using the opponents’ tricks, themselves, defensive units can avoid the aesthetically distasteful balance beaming that the VAR era has somehow encouraged. Defensive skiing means that centerbacks and fullbacks can spend less time cutting their toenails for fear of leaving an attacker one untrimmed cuticle onside, and more time rehearsing their actual approach.
Let’s face it. The modern status quo surrounding the “maintainment” of our teammates’ offside lines has become an awfully bland thing to watch. So much effort is devoted to restraining play with a rule that’s so inconsistently called–and even worse, a decision that’s entirely out of our hands!
Yes, the offside line is a necessary evil, and learning to trap correctly is vital at the top level, but enough with the American football sideline catch impressions. We must be smarter about how we use this thing. Unless you’ve executed flawlessly, and the flag is successfully raised, the play doesn’t end in our football! What happens when Mbappe actually squeaks in behind? When happens when the linesman makes a mistake? We can’t afford to fight gravity like a miscalculated gymnast. The beautiful game is hardly forgiving.
So, as we strategically copycat the opponent in our efforts to create something better, feel free to pause for a moment and smell the flowers!
I think it’s quite nice to soak in in the pleasing reflexiveness of “idea exchange” in this sport. The problem, neatly, proposes a solution in and of itself. Two enemies that face off in a footrace may have much to offer each other in terms of their respective approaches towards winning. A striker’s clever and threatening movement can be emulated by the centerback to stifle it. A defense that draws an offside line can use that very guide as a tool not only to restrain the attack, but instruct its own defenders. We give and we take.
Plus, worst case, if you’re not interested in this exercise of self-indulgence, you can at least rest easy, knowing that your offside trap will be better run than anyone else’s.
After all, I simply refuse to call a defensive game model surrounding a flimsy prayer of pixel-perfect timing, “robust”. Even less so, for youth teams or academies that lack even the comparatively decent officiating consistency available at the top level. Balance-beaming might somehow entice in the Bundesliga, but what does the U15 team do when they don’t have access to VAR? How can we instruct effective principles that apply at all levels of the game, and are easily transferrable once these prospects hit the big stage?
Bayern managed to achieve supreme success in 2020 (likely, more so due to their overwhelming firepower up top), but with the right opponent at the right time, their precarious and tip-toe-central high-line was exposed, leading to their eventual UCL elimination. They’d be well-off investigating methods for building something with stronger foundations.
And so, as they proceed to soul search, perhaps Hansi Flick ought to instruct Julian Nagelsmann to take the lads on a weekend getaway to Innsbruck, where they can learn a thing or two from the Austrians sliding effortlessly down the Alps. Or maybe, they can gather inspiration from the comfort of their own homes, here at Touchline Theory. Kingsley, if you’re reading this, congrats on title number ten.
‘Till next time.
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