LADIES, football for many of us is completely overrated and we generally show little interest in the game that seems to brainwash the men in our lives.

When we asked a team of 20 year old lads from Teesside University for their views on girls and football, the most popular question was ‘why don’t girls understand football?’

So girls, we at Tside have made it our goal to make sure you’re fully clued up, here are a few ‘important’ facts and rules about football that will show your man (or any guy underestimating your knowledge) that you know a lot more than you let on.

Lets kick off, we all know that a football game is 90 minutes long and consists of an 11 man team playing another team of another 11 men, one from each team being a goal keeper.

There are defenders, strikers and the rest, we get it, kick the ball, score a goal and everyone cheers, but, the lads made it clear to us that a girl is considerably more appealing if she understands the basics of the game they love so much, so here is a few of the things they said that would impress them.

The common opinion among the guys is that we don’t understand the offside rule – girls if you don’t already know it, it is really simple.

A player is caught offside if he is nearer to the opponents’ goal than the ball and any two opposing players when his team mate kicks him the ball, so a player cannot receive the ball unless two or more opposing players are between him and the goal.

The offside rule explained

Another thing the uni boys seem to think we have no idea about is: the transfer windows – personally I do not see the big deal but apparently ‘they are one of the most exciting days of the year’.

These windows open for teams to buy and sell their players with other teams.

These transfer periods happen twice a year one in the summer after the season finishes up until the 31st of August and another one that’s open for the whole of January.

Players cannot be transferred outside of these windows.

I know – not what I would call interesting either.

The guys pointed out that they wouldn’t expect their girlfriends to know all of the football competitions, but, they would hope they would know that there are different ones.

In particular the premiership: where teams play in a league from their country.

The FA cup and Capital One cup are competitions for English teams – dropping in you know those leagues would sure to earn you some brownie points.

English teams also play in European competitions but as long as you know there are quite a few competitions everywhere, all of which are ‘very important’ you are pretty much set.

Lastly, the guys hoped that we would understand the bookings, lets give them a tackle.

In a game the referee can give a player a red or yellow card.

The red card is given if the player has two yellow cards or does something that is seriously frowned upon – like head butting another player for instance, anything that purposely causes someone else pain or particularly and persistently dirty playing.

If a player is given a red card for any reason the player will serve a suspension and be instantly sent off.

The yellow card is given in less serious cases and more of a caution for things like wasting time or swearing – if a player persistently fouls other players they will receive the yellow card.

That’s the game with a few simple rules and facts that should keep any man in your life relatively happy – I know, not an intellectual game but quite easy to understand.

Hello!