The football referee errors problem
This is what
can make one really pissed off about a football game. Be it as beautiful and as
important as can be, the referee can always look the other way and not punish a
blatant foul in the penalty area. Or a beautiful and perfectly valid goal can
be cancelled for a perfectly invalid off-side position. If you are a football
fan like myself, you know what I'm talking about.
Even if all the
world can see on TV that it was a bad decision, as it's the case for big
tournaments like the Champions League or the World Cup, the referee's initial
ruling sticks. As a result, many final scores are known by everybody to be in
fact wrong. And these scores are what determines the champions, finalists and
other top-ranked teams.
And it happens
all the time, actually much too often. In fact it happens so often that there's
hardly any major tournament that's not distorted at its top.
To our knowledge, football authorities' main reason for not allowing video evidence to the refs is that it would mean more dead-time for the game while the action is analyzed and the proper decisions are taken. This would happen either by stopping the game, or rather by letting it flow but returning it back to the moment of the felony in case one is determined to have occured. This is of course a valid objection, but in our opinion it's hardly a decisive obstacle, a good balance should be possible between game flow and ensuring at least major decisions are correct. Let the field referee rule like now except for off-sides and penalties. These would be decided by the TV refs, which could be more than one for a game, especially for important ones. Surely a team of well-trained professionals, aided by state-of-the-art video refereeing technology, should be able to do better than the field refs are now. Then it would come down to this: what is preferable, about 2 minutes of the game discarded or a penalty granted wrongly ? We think the answer is clear, we'd take the loss of 2 game minutes anytime.
For other more minor decisions, the same thing could be done; or maybe not,
if this meant too much dead-time. It would have to be judged on a case-by-case
basis; for instance, incorrectly awarded dangerous free kicks would probably
have to be overruled by the video refs. Bottom line, it's hard to believe they
couldn't do better than they currently are. Hell, they could at least let the
referee watch the action on TV in case he has doubts.
Everyone knows there's too much dead-time already; penalty and off-side
situations should normally be few enough during a game so that the additional
dead-time brought by the video refs would be acceptable. Besides, this would
also mean some of it is cut, by eliminating wrongly awarded off-sides
(also penalties, but in their case this is the least concern). Only
experience could tell how things would really look like, and in our opinion
the least that can be said is that things are bad enough as they are so that
it would definitely be worth a try.
There are of
course those who defend the current way of proceeding. One of their arguments
is that, maybe you've heard it, referees are human and making mistakes is
human, and thus this all adds to the humanity of the game. Some even go that
far as to tell us football is more fun and entertaining like this. If you think
like this, then definitely this site is not for you.
As for us, we really
don't think football needs referee mistakes to be entertaining. We really don't
think it's more entertaining like this, in fact we think this is the single
most important item spoiling the game. We definitely like a game with Collina
more than one with Dick Jol. We think this is like saying humans cannot fly,
so it's not human to fly, so let's not have airplanes any more. And we find it
very sad when a team loses and the other one wins and advances based on
decisions everybody can see they are wrong. Now if you think like this, then
you're with us; read on, you might enjoy it.