Returning from Offside Position

• ✓Position is judged at the moment each ball is played or touched by a team-mate⁷
• ✓A player can be in an offside position on one pass and not on the next, because each pass is judged on its own^{4, 7}
• ✓Moving into an offside position as the ball is played counts, whatever the starting position was^{4, 6, 7}
• ✓The assistant referee's job is that moment: they position in line with the second-last defender, or with the ball if it is nearer the goal line^{10, 11, 12}
• ✓What the Laws provide about technology is permission: a competition may use it to assist the referee with offside, including semi-automated offside technology, which sends offside position information to the VAR and, in an advanced version, to the assistant referees^{1, 2, 9}

Offside position is judged at the moment the ball is played or touched by a team-mate, not when the player receives it. So a move with three passes in it has three separate offside checks, one per pass, and each is answered on where the players were at that instant. A player who was in an offside position when an earlier pass was made, and who is behind the second-last opponent and the ball when the pass that reaches them is made, is not in an offside position at all on that pass. The reverse case is the same rule read the other way: a player who starts an onside run and is past the second-last opponent and the ball at the instant of the pass is in an offside position, however far back they set off from. Nothing else enters into it. There is no test of whether the player had time to get back, and no credit for having been onside a moment earlier, because the only moment the Laws ask about is the one when the ball was played or touched.^{3, 4, 5, 6, 7}