Every football AI tells you whether a call was right.
OFFSIDE tells you why the argument never ends — and proves every reason against the actual Laws of the Game.
It breaks a contested call into the four reasons an argument lasts, and shows which ones apply:
Same engine on the 1986 Hand of God and this season’s VAR disputes. Every answer is proved against a real page of the Laws of the Game — and a second IBM model checks the first. It never invents a number.
A tool for the people who defendthese calls — referees’ bodies, rule-makers, broadcasters — not to re-argue a goal, but to show which gap each one exposes.
▸ Pick an incident — watch the diagnosis change (same engine, different answer). The live ones are unsettled right now.
Diego Maradona scored with his hand against England in the 1986 World Cup quarter-final. The referee allowed the goal, Argentina won, and the result was never overturned. The handball is admitted — the facts are settled. What stays contested is the acceptable outcome, not what happened.
THE SPLIT
Why is this still argued?
Every argument about a call comes down to four questions. OFFSIDE answers all four from the evidence and lights up the ones that are actually the reason here. Click any box to see the exact rulebook page behind it.
It stays contested over what could be seen in the moment and how named sources frame the same fact — not over the dimensions ruled out.
↑ Click any box to trace it to the real source page.
The four lenses
Each lens reads only its own evidence; every reading is audited by a second IBM model before it is shown.
IFAB Laws of the Game
The retrieved Law states a goal scored immediately after the ball touches the hand or arm does not stand (ifab-law12-handball-offence-p110); the rule yields one outcome for a hand-scored goal, so it is clear and rule-ambiguity does not hold.
✓ Backed by a cited sourceStatsBomb event data
The event data records this goal's body part as the catch-all label 'Other' while a comparable goal is a specific class (sb-hand-of-god-body-part); the schema having no category for the action is where the data model strains. This describes the data model only.
StatsBombOpen Data — used under the StatsBomb User Agreement
✓ Backed by a cited sourceCurated historical record
In 1986 there was no VAR or goal-line technology and the decision could not be reviewed (hist-tech-1986), and the officials gave differing accounts with no clear view of the handling (hist-officials-accounts); the decisive truth was not available to them in the moment.
✓ Backed by a cited sourceNamed-source quotes
Diego Maradona is reported to have justified the goal as 'a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God' (framing-maradona-1986), while Peter Shilton is reported to have condemned it as cheating (framing-shilton); two named sources frame the same agreed handball in opposite valence.
✓ Backed by a cited source