Why are assistant’s flags so slow?

Aquestion often asked is why do assistant referees take so long to raise their flag for offside at Premier League matches? The short answer is that it is all to do with VAR.

Having said that, there has certainly been a difference in raising the flag for offside since I started refereeing.

You would run the line for a league above where you referee and you were judged on how quickly you raised the flag. ‘Better late than never, but better never late,’ as one referee told me in a little criticism of my late flag.

It’s difficult to know why this was, because the Laws of the Game have been the same since the Laws were first written.

That is to say, players in an offside position, should not be penalised unless they play the ball or interfere with the play. This aspect of the Law was only taken seriously in quite recent times, and assistant referees are now taught to ‘wait and see’.

This means simply that when a ball is played to a team mate, who is in an offside position, the assistant referee will wait to see if the offside player, plays the ball or otherwise interferes with the game before flagging.

Waiting can take a little time. Take for instance an offside player, just inside the opponents half, chases a ball which a team mate has played over his head towards the opponents goal line.

If he is followed by an opposing player, the assistant referee must run after them, to see if the offside player plays the ball before flagging.

The delayed flag where this is VAR is slow for a different reason. Very often, the flag doesn’t go up until after a goal is scored, which is sometimes well after the suspected offside occurred.

The reason for this is that if the VAR disagrees with the assistant referee, the goal is allowed. If however, the flag was raised and play stopped denying the chance of a goal, only to find the VAR thinks it wasn’t offside, there is no going back to allow the goal.