Sir

In an astounding analysis of the failure of assistant referees to judge offside situations correctly (R. D. R. Oudejans et al. Nature 404, 33; 2000), a group of soccer scientists from — almost inevitably — the Netherlands define the object of their study thus: “In football (soccer), a player is ‘offside’ if he or she is closer to the goal than the last defender (excluding the goalkeeper) when the ball is passed to them.”

However, ‘offside’ in football depends on an attacker's distance from the goal line (the line forming the boundary of the pitch on that side, on which the defending team's goal is placed) rather than from the goal itself. Moreover, with respect to the offside rule the goalkeeper has the same status as any other player. Could it be that, in reality, assistant referees err so often because they don't know the rules of the game any better than those who conduct scientific studies on the rules?

For the correct rule see http://www.fifa2.com/scripts/runisa.dll?s7.6750696:gp:919357:67173+refs/laws/law11 — or ask somebody in the nearest pub.