18 April 2026, the 20th minute, Pacific FC against Halifax Wanderers. Matthew Baldisimo's shot is saved, the ball drops to Alejandro Díaz, and he sweeps the rebound in. Under the Laws of the Game everyone else plays by, the goal is offside. In the Canadian Premier League that day it stands, because no daylight showed between Díaz and the second-last defender (Canadian Premier League; ESPN). The match finished 2-2 (Canadian Premier League; the Daily Star).
That was the first goal scored under daylight offside. It is also the latest entry in a 163-year argument about one question: how far ahead of the ball is a forward allowed to be?
Every answer football has given has moved the same way. Each rewrite of the law has handed the attacker a little more room, and the first big one arrived only after defenders had made the old version unwatchable.
1863: everyone behind the ball
The first widely agreed offside law came with the Football Association and its first published laws in 1863. Any attacking player in front of the ball when it was kicked forward was offside (The Conversation, Euro 2020 history; The Conversation, offside explainer). The game then looked a lot like rugby, and the rule did too. Forward passing, in any useful sense, did not exist.
Three defenders, and the man who broke them
The law softened into a numbers rule. Until 1925 an attacker was offside unless at least three opponents stood between him and the goal line when the ball was played to him (The Blizzard; FourFourTwo). With the goalkeeper usually one of the three, the full-backs held the key to the whole game.
Bill McCracken, a Northern Irish full-back at Newcastle United, worked that out. FourFourTwo says he perfected an offside trap that caught forwards like flies in a web; The Blizzard calls him the full-back who brought the offside system to perfection. Step up at the right moment and the third defender vanished, and with him the forward's right to be there. Other defences copied it. Goals dried up and crowds fell away (FourFourTwo; The Blizzard).
This site, for the record, explains offside in a two-sentence glossary entry, so mocking anybody for struggling with Law 11 would be rich. Even so, the Laws of the Game were taken apart by a full-back on Tyneside, and the people who wrote them needed a run of scoreless stalemates before they noticed.
1925: three becomes two
In the summer of 1925 the International Football Association Board rewrote Law 11. Two opponents between attacker and goal line would now be enough, in force from the 1925-26 season (FourFourTwo; The Blizzard; The Conversation, Euro 2020 history).
The effect was not subtle. Goals in the English First Division rose from 1,192 in 1924-25 to 1,703 a season later, an increase of about 43 per cent (FourFourTwo; The Blizzard). The 40-goal striker, until then a rumour, became a type. Ted Harper of Blackburn Rovers was the first of them, in 1926 (FourFourTwo; The Blizzard), and two seasons later Dixie Dean scored 60 First Division goals for Everton in 1927-28 (FourFourTwo; Everton FC).
1990: level means onside
For the next 65 years an attacker level with the second-last defender was offside. The benefit of the doubt went to the defence.
In 1990 that flipped. An attacker level with the second-last opponent became onside (ESPN; The Conversation, offside explainer). It reads like a footnote, and on every tight call since it has decided who gets the goal.
What the law says now
The current Law 11 starts with the sentence most arguments in the pub skip: it is not an offence to be in an offside position. A player is in an offside position if any part of the head, body or feet is in the opponents' half and nearer the opponents' goal line than both the ball and the second-last opponent. Hands and arms do not count, for any player, goalkeepers included. A player level with the second-last opponent, or with the last two, is not in an offside position (IFAB Laws of the Game, Law 11; The FA, Law 11).
The offence only comes when a player in that position becomes involved in active play, by interfering with play or an opponent, or by gaining an advantage (IFAB; The FA).
Read closely, that is a law about toes and shoulders. Video review turned it into one about frames, and the minutes spent drawing those lines are covered in why a VAR check takes so long.
2026: daylight, and Canada goes first
Arsène Wenger, FIFA's chief of global football development, first proposed daylight offside in February 2020 (ESPN, May 2025; ESPN, March 2026). The idea turns the 1990 change up a notch. An attacker is onside if any part of the body that can score is level with the defender, so offside is called only when there is clear space between the two (ESPN; The Conversation, Brock University).
The Canadian Premier League began trialling it in April 2026, in cooperation with FIFA (ESPN; The Conversation, Brock University; Canadian Premier League). Wenger's case, as he put it to beIN Sports, is that video review took away the striker's benefit of the doubt (ESPN).
So the oldest argument in the game is being run, live, on Canadian pitches.
Who the law has always served
Offside has never been a neutral law. It is a dial, and every big turn on this page has gone towards the forward. The governing body turned it in 1925 only after McCracken's trap had emptied the scoresheets, and it took another 65 years to decide that level should mean onside. Daylight is sold on a different complaint, the marginal call that video review now rules on to the millimetre, which makes it the first rewrite in a century aimed at the lines rather than the defenders.
The dated record:
- 1863: Football Association laws. Any attacker ahead of the ball is offside.
- Until 1925: three opponents needed between attacker and goal line. Bill McCracken's Newcastle United trap.
- 1925-26: two opponents. First Division goals up from 1,192 to 1,703.
- 1927-28: Dixie Dean, 60 First Division goals for Everton.
- 1990: level with the second-last opponent is onside.
- April 2026: daylight offside trial begins in the Canadian Premier League.
- 18 April 2026: Alejandro Díaz, Pacific FC, the first daylight goal.
Under Law 11 as the IFAB writes it, Díaz's goal in the 20th minute would not have counted.
Sourcing: The International Football Association Board, The Football Association, the Canadian Premier League, Everton FC, ESPN, FourFourTwo, The Blizzard, The Conversation and the Daily Star.