Changing Offside Rules in VAR Generation

It’s become frankly obvious that many offside ruling post VAR review are hurting the game rather helping it.

The overuling of the Wolves equalizer vs Liverpool (29/12/2019) is yet again an illustration of this fact. VAR showed barely an inch (or less?) of the player as offside, early in the play, and ruled the goal offside. There have already been many identical instances of this issue this season.

Let’s not forget that football is - perhaps above all - a source of entertainment, enjoyed by so many of us. The implementation of VAR has undeniably been a tremendous improvement for football, and perhaps has yet to reach its full potential. It is understandable, however, that VAR would have unplanned consequences, as it is still a young innovation to this game. This issue of overuled offside goals that are only detectable by VAR is arguably one of those issues, and very much harms the entertainment value that is so important to football.

The objective of this petition is therefore to change the offiside rule in this new era of VAR. As it stands, a play is offiside the player(s) has any body part that is offside. Instead, we suggest that if the same player(s) has any body part that is ONSIDE, then the play should NOT be called offside.

We argue this solution provides the kind of tolerance margin that would restore a sense of logic and appreciation for VAR. Furthermore, it would provide more of a safeguard to the entertainment value of football, which is all we care about in the end.