I agree that VAR is killing things and needs to change.
Things to remember: the rules apply to everyone (except Liverpool and ManU, obvs.): what goes against goes for us some of the time. Some things look offside when they are not, so the idea of only checking it in real time is just where we were before VAR, which pissed everyone off.
We can ignore the direction people are facing because then it will come down to how rotated they are, whether the top of the body is more rotated, whether their left-foot is facing the wrong way etc. As a prototype rule, we could say 'where the hips are facing' and you then have everyone wearing baggy clothes so goals stand by omission of evidence. You could take the average direction of both feet, but then if one is off the ground and turning towards goal, they have an advantage as both their feet are going to be facing the goal in 1 millisecond and that pisses everyone off. Plus, Robert Pires would've crashed their computer.
We can't only use the position of the feet because people scoring with snapshot diving-headers will piss everyone off and that would be criminal, because they're fucking ace.
There aren't many options:
1. Get rid of VAR. We all know how that is. Maybe is was good enough. I don't think it was.
2. Get used to this. Meh.
3. More tech.
One possible thing to try would be a laser, writing the line on the ground, that constantly tracks the last defenders trailing body part. Everyone can see it, strikers will have no excuse and there would be fewer surprises.
I like the idea of body trackers. A single point, taken from the same devices that currently track their movement (placed between shoulder blades). We already have the tech, it's used on loads of players during games already. The only problem is that it isn't super-accurate, we could mitigate that by using the same tech for everyone, however if the teams managed their own tech, they could cheat and give false positions. Would have to be centrally managed.
Also, note that these trackers have a latency, which would need to be reduced before it could be used in competition. As it stands, they send their position every 500-1000 milliseconds, which is too slow and would give them the chance to go offside early without triggering the rule (in retrospect that would just look like they'd accelerated very quickly and then we'd be arguing what 'too quick' was). This problem never goes away, but we could agree on what was close enough.
One, let's say 'left-field', option is to use some combo of the above and put collars on the players, so that if they cross the line, they get a nasty electric shock. Something like 'The Running Man', but less gory. That'd be fucking hilarious and we'd see the end of offside in days, or get some good old gladiatorial entertainment instead.
:lamelashock:
Seriously though, I reckon we could find the middle ground. Merge the above. Use the body-trackers: a light/sound in the stadium and give the players a 'buzz' from their trackers when they go offside and we get some more-immediate indicator for both player and fans when tech spots the problem. The player will know if their buzzer was going when they got the pass. Less time spent watching/celebrating non-goals and also gives the players a kick to get back onside quicker.
Or, get rid of offside entirely. Go full 19th century and play 1-0-10!