The offside law appears to be clear:  A player in is in an offside position if he is nearer to his opponents’ goal line than both the ball and the second last opponent.  A player is not in an offside position if he is in his own half of the field of play; or he is level with the second last opponent;  or he is level with the last two opponents.  The words nearer to his opponents’ goal line mean that any part of his head, body or feet is nearer to his opponents’ goal line than both the ball and the second last opponent.

According to this definition, when Ruud van Nistelrooy opened the scoring against France on Monday night he was clearly, as he appeared to believe himself, offside, because only the goalkeeper stood between him and the goal line when the ball was last played.  So the hundreds of thousands of fans who witnessed the incident at the stadium or on television screens around the world could be forgiven for thinking that the assistant referee had blundered.

Amazingly, therefore, officials have now sprung to the defence of their colleague.  It is said that Christian Panucci, the Italian defender who had seconds earlier stumbled off the pitch after a collision with his goalkeeper and was then lying next to the goal, was keeping van Nistelrooy onside.  David Taylor, the EUEFA General Secretary, is reported to have said, “This defender is still considered part of the game.  If we did not have this interpretation, what could happen is the defending team could step off the pitch to play offside and that is clearly unacceptable.  As a defender, you are in play unless you have permission to be off the field.”

This appears to be a wonderful piece of retroratiocination to justify an appalling error.  FIFA’s rules say “If a defending player steps behind his own goalline in order to place an opponent in an offside position, the referee shall allow play to continue and caution the defender for deliberately leaving the field of play without the referee’s permission when the ball is next out of play.”  That, of course, was not this case.  The player was injured.  He did not “step” off the field of play.  It was not ungentlemanly conduct and he was not awarded a yellow card as a caution.  And by no stretch of the imagination could it be said that van Nistelrooy was not nearer to his opponents’ goal line than his second last opponent.

Laws of society or rules of a game are useless if they are not clearly expressed and uniformly and fairly applied.  This law, far from being clear, was certainly not fairly applied and France have every reason to complain that they were unfairly treated.  The Netherlands went on to win the game handsomely with a fine and entertaining performance, but who knows what would have happened if this decision had been correctly made.