No one understands the offside rule, insists Alan Hansen

The interpretation of whether a player is active or passive, or whether he has joined in the play from the first or second phase of a move, has caused so much confusion that teams are being unfairly penalised.

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'Nobody can explain it to anybody,' said Hansen. 'The legislators don't know how it works, referees don't know how it works, managers and players, supporters and neutrals - not one person in the Western world knows how it works!'

In one Premier League game last season Everton had a winner disallowed at Blackburn and both managers, David Moyes and Mark Hughes, called for the law to be changed.

Hughes asked: 'Do any of you understand the rules? We've had all these arguments before; it's too much of a grey area and makes it difficult for officials and frustrating for managers. It's crazy really. When I was plying my trade it was stonewall offside. It has changed somewhat; a player is inactive, then he becomes active. I've no idea.'

The solution, Hansen insists, is to revert to the previous offside law, which was clearly understood and served football well. 'When it was black and white, it was simple,' said the former Liverpool and Scotland centre-half, who is lauded as one of the foremost television analysts. 'If you were offside, you were offside.'

Hansen rejected the radical step of completely removing the offside law. 'You couldn't do that,' he said at the launch of the New Football Pools, for whom he is acting as a pundit.

'They tried it in Scotland and I played in a match where you couldn't be offside up to the 18-yard line. It was one of the worst games you've ever seen. There was nothing in the middle of the park. You had one set of players at one end of the pitch and another set at the other end, with nothing in between.

'The offside law is an integral part of football and it's what makes the game great. But they need to go back to the way it was under the old law.' Despite Hansen's dismay, Premier League's referees supremo Keith Hackett insisted that his men do know the offside law and he accused TV pundits of confusing the issue when they should know better.

He pointed out that the key area of confusion, about whether a player is 'active' and therefore offside, is determined by the PIG criteria: if he does not Play, Interfere or Gain (an advantage) he is fine.

'Match officials do know the laws and apply them to the best of their ability,' added Hackett. 'But time and again pundits criticise perfectly valid decisions. The law, clarified by the International FA Board in 2005, is a good, effective one but seems to have totally eluded some in the media.

'Officials understand it perfectly and so could the lads in the studio if they wanted to. It's set out in black and white for anyone who finds time to read it. Many pundits do a fine job, but they are misleading fans and winding themselves up with old and wrong information.'

Apart from the confusion over the offside law, Hansen's biggest criticism of the modern game is diving, which he fears will never be removed. 'I think diving is in English football for good and it drives me crazy,' he said.

'The Continentals have brought a lot of great things into English football but one bad thing they brought was diving.

'When I played my first game in the European Cup away from home, (Liverpool boss) Bob Paisley said to me: "Don't go near anybody in the box because they will fall over". Gary Lineker will tell you that when he went to Spain, they didn't think there was anything wrong with diving.

'It is part and parcel of the foreign culture. It came to a climax at one of the World Cups in the Nineties when it was unbelievable. We saw people diving at corner kicks like you'd never believe. But it's very difficult to get rid of. The problem for referees is that you can watch an incident 20 times and you can't tell if contact has been made.

'You can tell the blatant dive, but you can't tell the ones who are good at it. Let's hope it doesn't get any worse, but I think we're stuck with it for the simple reason referees struggle to tell whether a player has dived or not.'