Sorry to my readers that I haven't written in some time. To be honest I've been having a rough go at it for the last little while, and although I have little pockets of goodness, I haven't been all that content. The weather change in Berlin turns from pleasant to grey, windy, and cold, with the message of "this isn't going away any time soon". For me, the prospect of another winter with people who also turn as grey and miserable in the winter is not exactly a turn-on. Then you add just "everyday german life" to that (as I've often ranted about), I've just felt beaten down and demotivated, preferring to fester in my thoughts in the comfort of my own home.
Ahem. Good Morning! So the purpose of this post is to sound off on the topic of the world governing body of football - FIFA. As some of you may have heard, Ireland will not be travelling to South Africa for the World Cup 2010 due to a highly controversial goal in which revered French footballer Thierry Henry clearly played the ball with his hand before passing over to a teammate who scored the goal who saw them go through and Ireland go out - despite Ireland being a major underdog in the qualification group, having done very well in their campaign, and not having lost a match (many draws however).
It was blatant poor refereeing. This is certainly not the first time the wrong call from the referee has affected the outcome of a match, most famous of all the controversial World Cup of 1966 which saw England win their one and only World Cup Champion title. Not saying it wasn't a goal, but there were a lot of people who would have rested more comfortably knowing it was double-checked against a recording.
Now what seems completely normal to a warm-blooded hockey-loving Canadian on a disputable goal would be simply to ask: "Why don't they just take it upstairs?" Hockey has had video replays to double-check hard-to-call goals for I don't know how long. The referee is humble enough to know he doesn't know for sure, and so calls to the booth upstairs to get confirmation from the video replays, rather the referee's assistant upstairs watching the video, whether the puck crossed the line.
But no, this is Europe. Change is a very slow thing here because you have to first make a case for circumventing hundreds of years of tradition before anything can change. The common argument from FIFA is that the referee's word is final, and if we introduce video goal line technology, it may indeed become a slippery slope for other incidents where the ref's calls have come into question.
And now the opinion part of this post: the governing body FIFA is simply opposed to it on instinct and will say whatever BS they want in order to not introduce this because to be honest, if they really did want to implement such technology fairly, and without "the slippery slope", they could just look to ice hockey as an example. You have the video replay operator in a booth somewhere in the stadium, who is officially a referee (or part of the referee's group of assistants, like linesmen are) and the only one who has access to him is the referee himself. If the ref is unsure himself of what happened (with respect to a goal) he can just call the video ref for backup. I honestly don't see how this can be a bad idea. We have the technology. Wireless communication, hello? Ever heard of a walkie talkie? Well now we're nearly in 2010 and have technology that can blow a walkie talkie out of the water.
In the end FIFA's motto is "my game is fair play" and the way the Irish went out at the hands (literally) of the French, it effectively made a mockery of this motto. Video technology upholds the integrity of the game, allows referees to save face / remain human, and cause fewer controversies in general. I would have at least thought it would garner support from the measurement-loving Germans, but that remains to be seen.
No comments:
Post a Comment