What is an offside?

Last Friday I participated in an online group for English conversation, and the subject in discussion was the World Futbol Cup. This is the most important topic right now. Everyone in the group was sharing their points of view and opinions about the games, about the players, about the politic issues involving this kind of massive events, and so on.


Out of the blue someone asked ‘What’s an offside?’. At first, I thought that I could easily answer this question, without any effort, because I obviusly know everything about soccer, since I’m a latin-american guy born in the 80s. So I volunteered to explain this rule, hoping to make myself clear and straight with the answer. But, oh no, how fool I was. I began my exposition telling them about the required distance between the goalkeeper and the closer striker from the oposite team, but I got confused quickly with this aproach because I wasn't considering the defenders alignment. So, I began my explanation for a second time saying that the defender from the team A has to be beyond the striker from the team B, and this before the midfielder from the team B kick the ball to the stricker in order to be declare offside by the line judge.


Noticing that my words weren’t making any sense, and for the third time, I tried to make them understand something apparently so simple and obvious. Thus, the offside, I said, is a rule made to forbid a striker from the team A to stay alone, near to the enemy goal waiting for a long pass from the other side of the field, and in this way score a goal easily. The only way where a striker from the team A can receive a pass from some teammate is if there is at least one player from the opposite team closer to the goal than the striker, beside the goalkeeper. In few words, if the striker gets the ball between the keeper and the last defender, that’s an offside.


“Was my answer clear this time? Did you guys undertand the meaning of an offside?” I asked the colleages waiting for approval, but the only thing I heard from them was the chirp from a thounsand crickets invading the room. I went deaf for a second. Eyes of incomprehension stared at the bottom of my soul, needling my fragile futbolistic self steem. They went crazy, their minds blew up, the reunion became a warzone of vulgarities against me and my whole family, including my cats, all because they continued as clueless as before, or even worse.


After a couple of minutes of insanity the meeting was back on track, but the subject changed to "The rules and the scoring system in American Football".