Photo by Visionhaus
The Liverpool manager doesn’t think it would be hard to make decisions both quicker and fairer.
A bigger line, clear daylight, and a margin of error. That’s what the managers want to see introduced to make offsides both quicker and fairer to the attacking team in a world with Video Assistant Referee, at least according to Jürgen Klopp.
“It’s not the biggest problem in the world,” Klopp noted when asked about the current approach to offsides with VAR—which at least if you believe some of the talking heads paid to talk about the game rather is the biggest problem in the world.
Just how big a problem one thinks it is, though, it’s clear decisions can take far too long. And ruling based on millimetres feel against the spirit of the game given in the past the benefit of the doubt was meant to be given to the attacker.
“We want to have clarification and right decisions,” Klopp continued. “Offside we get that now, but the problem is it feels like half an hour and the toenail is offside. We had a manager meeting with UEFA and [we want] to make the line bigger.”
Right now, the lines seen on television by fans aren’t the lines officials see—theirs are much smaller. Lines as big as what’s seen by the fans, though, ones that give the benefit to the attacker if they overlap at all, does seem an obvious solution.
“I would like that,” Klopp added. “I don’t know who would decide that. Then it doesn’t take so long to make a decision would also be better.”
