Vertonghen, Berti, Rijkaard, Tommasi: Ten even worse offside decisions than Luis Diaz v Tottenham

Who remembers Luis Diaz’s disallowed goal against Spurs at the weekend? Long time ago now, but most of you probably still remember it. He was onside, Stew, but the linesman gave it offside and then the VAR, Stew, he thought it had been given as a goal so he said “check complete” and the goal wasn’t given. No, he was onside, Stew. Because of Cristian Romero’s leg. He was onside, Stew, but it was given offside by mistake. And Simon Hooper made a face.

It’s now, of course, the Worst Decision Ever because 1) VAR f**ked it completely and even more importantly 2) it happened to Liverpool.

But among the various funny things about this is that the actual decision at the heart of it all is really quite humdrum in its wrongness. The linesman really should have twigged that Diaz was behind Romero’s leg, but he was also a very long way from Romero’s leg and clearly in front of Destiny Udogie who was actually marking him. It’s a mistake, but it’s an understandable, forgivable one. We’ve long been of the view that judging offside is essentially a superhuman task, not least because it requires the ability to look simultaneously in at least three different places, at three different things, any or all of which are likely to be moving in different directions at high speed. That’s kind of why we decided to give them some help. In theory.

It was a wrong decision, but not initially inexcusably or inexplicably so. Here, for instance, are 10 worse offside decisions. And to be clear, we’re dealing here with your goals wrongly disallowed for offside rather than wrongly given. No place here for your Marcus Rashfords or your Leeds Will Go Mads.

Jan Vertonghen, Tottenham v Sunderland, 2015
Possibly our favourite offside decision of all time this, because at its heart it contains something that everyone can agree is one of the things that genuinely annoys about officials: smugness. It’s the only explanation for what happened here. The linesman got so pleased with himself for remembering one very important part of offside law that he completely forgot about another one.

The scene is this: Spurs are leading Sunderland 2-1 in injury time. Sunderland have a corner and send everyone up, including (importantly) goalkeeper Costel Pantilimon. Spurs clear the corner and break. For some reason, Jan Vertonghen is the furthest man forward in this breakaway and is sent clear to score in the empty net. However, when the ball is passed to him there is but one Sunderland defender between him and the goal. With the keeper stranded further upfield, our very clever linesman realises this puts Vertonghen offside. What a clever sausage, and he’d have been absolutely right as well, but for the trifling fact Vertonghen was also about six yards inside his own half when the ball was played. The sheer distance by which Vertonghen was onside is a big factor in this one – possibly the most mathematically and geographically onside anyone given offside has ever been – but the fact it was a halfway-line offside rather than a last-defender offside is another huge reason why this one is so great, because unlike defenders the halfway line gives clear assistance to the officials by being famously both a) a line and b) stationary.

Nicola Berti, Italy v England, 1990
Fair enough this one, we reckon. If you will insist on bothering with a World Cup third-place play-off then you should at least endeavour to make it halfway memorable by giving some genuinely batshit decisions like randomly deciding Nicola Berti is offside despite not one, not two, not three but an entire back four of England defenders playing him onside before he sends a lovely looping header into the far corner. Nobody cares about the result, so it follows that nobody should care about what is perhaps by sheer weight of numbers the worst offside call ever.

Paul Scholes, Manchester United v Porto, 2004
This is perhaps the greatest sliding doors offside of the lot. It’s a bad decision because Scholes is clearly onside in a crowded penalty area, but there are definitely worse decisions on this list. There might not be many more impactful ones, though. Had Scholes’ goal stood, United would have been 2-0 up and surely on their way to eliminating Jose Mourinho’s Porto from the Champions League. Instead, Porto snatched a late equaliser to go through on away goals, Mourinho ran the length of Old Trafford, won the entire bloody thing and the Cult of The Special One was born. Who knows how different English and European football might have looked over the last 15 years if the linesman had got this decision right.

Jorge Cadete, Celtic v Rangers, 1997
No big deal. Only a crunch title clash between the Old Firm rivals as Rangers went for their ninth title in a row. So there’s no great significance attached to an 87th-minute equaliser that would have put Celtic back level at 2-2 in a game they would ultimately lose 3-1.

David Robertson, Rangers v Celtic, 1996
A farcical decision because Robertson is miles onside when being found by Brian Laudrup to score from a tight angle, and, while it was far less significant than Jorge Cadete’s it truly earns its place in this list because of the fact the commentary team genuinely don’t realise the goal has been – admittedly absurdly – ruled out for six full, excruciating minutes. Watch the whole thing.

Martin O’Neill, Northern Ireland v France, 1982
Having beaten Spain to qualify for the weird round-robin quarter-final stage that the 1982 World Cup had for some reason, Northern Ireland needed to beat France to qualify for the semi-finals. Northern Ireland. World Cup. Semi-finals. Crazy format, crazy times. Only so much crazy could be tolerated, though: they got beat 4-1 by France and that was that. But not entirely that. At 0-0, Martin O’Neill had a goal disallowed for offside. It was not offside. Another monumental ‘who knows’ moment that could have been changed by VAR, as long as the VAR lads were watching the game and not busy with a particularly tricky Candy Crush level or some such. You can find it a minute and 40 seconds into this enormously enjoyable highlights video.

Frank Rijkaard, Netherlands v England, 1993
Largely forgotten because the Netherlands won a deeply controversial game and Graham Taylor memed himself into oblivion decades before memes were even a thing, but in amongst it all there was a genuinely inexplicable offside given against Frank Rijkaard and another reminder that mistakes like this are a result of incompetence rather than malevolence pretty much every single time.

Not quite the Full Berti, this one, but there were still three England defenders all playing Rijkaard a yard onside, which is still quite a lot of players and still quite a long way. In offside terms.

Gary Lineker, Tottenham v Nottingham Forest, 1991
Younger readers may be surprised to learn that dangerous BBC Marxist and occasional crisp-hawking wisecracker Gary Lineker was in another life a prolific striker. They might be even more surprised to learn that in those days Spurs also sometimes won trophies. The 1991 FA Cup win ended what was seen at the time as a lengthy seven-year fallow period. The fools. Anyway, it was a final best remembered for Gazza trying and failing to get himself sent off in the first five minutes and then ruining his knee because he was just too excited before Spurs got themselves back into the game and eventually won it in extra-time through a Des Walker own goal.

Before all that, though, Lineker had a grim 10-minute spell in the first half in which he saw a penalty saved by Mark Crossley and had a goal disallowed for offside that defied all sense.

Edson Montano, Newcastle Jets v Western Sydney Wanderers, 2015
With all due respect, you know if a decision from an A-League game is making its way into one of these lists then it must be an absolute doozie. And this is certainly an all-timer. Frankly it’s a wonder football has managed to continue as a sport at all after its sporting integrity was so fatally undermined by a decision this bad.

We can only assume that because it happened in men’s football in Australia nobody much noticed. But imagine if it had happened to a proper team like Liverpool. Doesn’t bear thinking about.

Damiano Tommasi, Italy v Korea, 2002
Worth including here for several reasons. First and most importantly, it’s a honking great howler of a decision because he is tremendously onside. Second, it’s pretty significant: this would have been an extra-time golden goal to take Italy into the World Cup quarter-final at the expense of surprise-package co-hosts South Korea.

And third, it’s worth including because while we are firmly in the “incompetence not corruption” camp for pretty much every single mistake ever made by officials, there is an exception to prove every rule and this one might be it. Tommasi’s disallowed goal wasn’t even the only or most egregious error from an officiating team led by the infamous Byron Moreno, a referee who was suspended for ‘timekeeping errors’ in his native Ecuador, investigated by FIFA and, when he returned from suspension almost immediately suspended again for sending off three Deportivo Quito players in a 1-1 draw with Deportivo Cuenca.

He also served 26 months in prison after being arrested in New York attempting to smuggle in six kilograms of heroin in his underpants.

So, yeah, sometimes, very occasionally, it might possibly be corruption.