FIFA’s refusal to allow technology is not helping the sport.
Right to the final itself it was always difficult to keep England out of the FIFA 2010 World Cup. Trust an Englishman to dish out the highest number of yellow cards in an international match — 14 — and send a player off in the World Cup final. Aren’t Englishmen supposed to be the fairest of the lot? The Dutch management and players are said to be incensed by referee Howard Webb, whom they blame for their losing the match to the more efficient Spanish team. Throughout this World Cup there has always been a reason to blame someone for something.
In the opening match it was the vuvuzela — about 75,000 of them — that rendered the referee’s whistle inaudible to the players of South Africa and Mexico. In England’s opening match against the US, it was the much-maligned Jabulani matchball which came in for days of criticism because England’s goalkeeper made a schoolboy howler in conceding an American goal.
Just when England needed to play for their lives to stay in the World Cup against the slick Germans, history will tell us that it was the worst two hours of football ever played by an England team, with Germany trouncing the hapless millionaires 4-1 on their way to the last eight of football’s showpiece event. Very quickly former England internationals, now TV pundits, began to put their knives into England’s much-vaunted Italian coach and his team of squabbling under-achievers. It is the English custom at these times to seek someone to blame: Fabio Capello, the coach, was in the direct line of fire from the entire country, but it could be a double hit with the lining up of Sepp Blatter, president of football’s world governing body FIFA, a sometimes arrogant man and given to clownish statements, who said back in March, as if issuing a papal infallible decree, that football would never use goal-line technology.
He was watching as England scored a second goal through a dramatic effort from Frank Lampard. Less than five seconds after the goal was disallowed, the billion or so watching could see what the referee, Jorge Larrionda of Uruguay, had missed: that the ball had, beyond all doubt, crossed the line. The referee had four assistant referees to help him and none of them was able to confirm that the ball had crossed the line! Two of those assistant referees were actually marshalling the goal lines behind the goals themselves! Had the goal stood, England would have drawn level with Germany 2-2, and in the opinion of Capello, would have “changed the game”. We will never know, because from that moment on, Germany inflicted a pogrom of pain on England’s footballers and fans, the repercussions from which will be felt for many years.
There is not a person in the world who has not said that there should have been some kind of communication with the referee at that instant to inform him that the ball had crossed the goalline. It would have taken no more than 10 seconds. But on reflection there is one man who seems to have a solitary voice against the rest of the footballing world. He is the FIFA president.
Sepp Blatter is living in the past. His refusal to allow the global game the tools of technology to get decisions right is turning international football into a laughing stock. In the case Lampard’s disallowed goal, all that was required was for a third referee (cricket’s third umpire) to radio the referee in the middle of the pitch that the ball had crossed the line. Could anything be less complicated?
Even more damaging was the offside decision that went against Mexico in their match with one of the tournament favourites, Argentina. A blatant offside line-call was obvious to everyone in the stadium and the billions watching on TV, but not to the referee or his assistant referees (linesmen in my day). The giant TV screens inside the stadium at Soccer City in Johannesburg made the officials look like clowns, just as they did in the Free State Stadium in Bloemfontein. That they were not allowed to change their minds in both stadiums goes against the spirit of fair play and leaves the sport morally bankrupt.
FIFA’s opposition stems from Blatter’s decree that the entire game — from grassroots to World Cup final — should be officiated in the same manner. It is a noble thought but it loses its power when injustices are allowed to stand. FIFA also cites the cost of implementing such a policy, and that is laughable considering the vast amount of money it made out of this World Cup alone.
There remains an overwhelming need for football to go the way of other sports and accept the technology that would stop such appalling mistakes from occurring. Sepp Blatter’s refusal to allow cameras to help referees, even though they are now routinely used in cricket, rugby union and tennis, including Wimbledon — often seen as the last redoubt of unyielding tradition — puts the President of FIFA in the dock. Blatter needs to embrace video technology. It won’t kill him, but if he does not, it may be the issue that defines and besmirches his time in power.
Alan Wilkins is a TV broadcaster for ESPN Star Sports. Inside Edge appears every alternate week
