and causes the play to be whistled for offside.

One innovation that should be tested is to make it like hockey and create an offensive zone where everyone is immune from an offside call once the ball is there.

In other words, once the ball is below the top of the 18 yard box, it’s a free for all and the offside rule doesn’t apply. Maybe there is a problem with this that I’m not considering.

I think the offside rule is needed in general. However, once the majority of the players from both teams are bunched in front of one goal mouth, I think the offside rule is less important and actually can start to ruin the flow of the game. It can lead to these types of ticky tack offside calls that are called wrong half the time anyway.