Ah, offside. The only rule in football that can make a grown adult weep into a cup of tea while shouting at a television screen. I have been playing and watching this beautiful, ridiculous sport for years, and I still cannot explain the difference between 'interfering with play' and 'just existing in a mildly menacing way near the ball.' So imagine my delight when Sky Sports dug up two decisions from January 2023 that made the entire football world ask: what on earth is going on?

Let me set the scene. Manchester United vs Manchester City. Casemiro slides a through ball toward Marcus Rashford. Rashford is so far offside that he could have ordered a hot dog and waited for the next bus. He runs after the ball, causes confusion in the City defence, but does not touch it. Bruno Fernandes arrives from an onside position and sweeps the ball past Ederson. Assistant referee Darren Cann raises his flag. Referee Stuart Attwell has a chat. Goal given. Cue chaos. Former Premier League referee Chris Foy says he 'can see absolutely no reason why the goal should not have stood.' Keith Hackett calls the laws an 'a**.' Charming.

Now, while everyone was still screaming about that, a very similar incident happened at Brighton vs Liverpool. Trent Alexander-Arnold was flagged offside after Cody Gakpo's shot. Trent did not touch the ball. He just shepherded it out for a throw-in. Flag. Offside. No goal, so no headlines. No column inches. No former referees explaining the finer points on television. Just a quiet, lonely offside flag on the south coast. Same rule, completely different application. Sky Sports asked what the difference was. I asked my cat. My cat walked away.

Pep Guardiola, to be fair, was not having the 'no interference' argument. He said Manu Akanji stops the line of running. If Akanji knows he is going with Rashford, he goes back with him and does the duel one versus one. But Rashford intervenes in the action. The referee decided he did not intervene in this stadium. Pep's response? 'It's ok, what are we going to do? Are we going to make a complaint? No. Congratulations for that. Sometimes it happens in our favour. Sometimes it's like that.' Then he dropped the classic: 'It's Old Trafford. We have to play much better. Like it's Anfield.' As if Old Trafford has a magical force field that rewrites the offside law. 'The rule is the rule, the interpretation belongs to the referee. I say Rashford is offside, Bruno is not. The situation is for the referees.'

Fast forward to 2026. We have semi-automated offside technology, giant screens, and enough cameras to spot a mosquito's eyebrow twitching. And yet the 'interfering with play' clause still feels like a riddle written by a lawyer who hates fun. I can only assume the rulebook contains a hidden chapter that says: 'If the player is wearing red, and the stadium is loud, and the wind is blowing from the north, then the offside is whatever the referee had for breakfast.'

Let's be clear: I do not envy referees. They have to interpret a law that seems designed by a committee of philosophical goats. But the problem is not the rule itself. The problem is consistency. If the same action gets two different results, fans lose their minds. And when fans lose their minds, they start tweeting at 2 a.m. about grass length and VAR lines.

I have tried to explain this to friends who do not watch football. I show them the Rashford clip. I show them the Trent clip. I say, 'See? Same thing.' They say, 'The first one scored, the second one didn't.' I say, 'No, that's not the point.' They say, 'Then what is the point?' I stare into the middle distance. I have no answer. I am just a person with a laptop and a deep fear of the phrase 'subjective interpretation.'

Maybe the lesson is that football will always be a beautiful, infuriating mess. The laws may be an 'a**,' as Keith Hackett so elegantly put it. But if they are applied consistently, we can learn to live with them. The trouble is, we are still waiting for that consistency. In the meantime, I will keep watching, keep shouting, and keep pretending I know what 'interfering with play' means. I do not. But I love it anyway.

So here we are in 2026, still arguing about a January 2023 decision. That is football. That is offside. That is why I cannot quit you, you gorgeous, nonsensical game. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go lie down and watch the Sky Sports comparison video one more time. Just for fun. Or pain. Probably both.