Originally Posted by TeamTrousers
@ those clamouring for tv replays in-game
The problem is that football is a fast moving and free flowing game, and unlike many sports, it doesn't have regular and frequent natural breaks in play which would allow for reference to replay monitors.
Imagine there is an incident where one team believe a foul has been committed, but the referee doesn't give it. How and when and by whom is play stopped to review the incident?
Maybe you think it should be immediately upon appeal by one of the teams? What if the replay then concludes that the referee was correct to play on, and there was no infringement? How do you restart when the ball was already live and there has not been an infringement? Normally, that would be by drop-ball, such as when play is stopped for injury. There would be a ridiculous number of drop-ball restarts in the game to keep restarting play if the teams were continually allowed to appeal the decision, not to mention that there would be an even greater deterioration of an already scant respect for officials and their decisions. Or maybe the deterrent to such appeals would be that the team which isn't appealing frivolously gets a direct free kick. Or maybe you only get a set number of appeals per match. But then what if a mistake happens after you used all your appeals. Doesn't eliminate mistake if that happens.
Or, what if the referee waits until the ball naturally goes dead? Well, the nature of football means that that may take several minutes. So after several minutes extra play, you finally consult the replay and conclude that there was an infringment. What happens to the time spent playing out the game until the ball went dead? In theory, none of that play should have happened. Is the clock wound back? What about other infringements which happen in that time period? Particularly, how do you deal with an incident that may require disciplinary action? The player could then argue that the incident shouldn't have happened because of the earlier infringement.
Even if play is continued while another official, who is not part of the on-pitch team, reviews the incident(s), once again, how does this affect the clock, and how does it affect incidents which occur in the play which continues while this fifth official is reviewing. Imagine that during the review time another player commits a red card or yellow card offence (that isn't violent conduct) but the original incident is ruled as being a foul. Does that subsequent offence still also get penalised even though in theory it shouldn't happen once you wind play back to the first incident?
Also, fouls can be very much matters of interpretation, two people, even neutrals, can watch the same incident and come to differing conclusions as to the fairness of a play. Take the Kaka incident a few days ago (against Ivory Coast?). I personally wouldn't say what Kaka did was even a foul, much less violent conduct. I think he merely raises his arm as self defence to ward off a player who is about to collide with him — there is nothing aggressive or violent in his actions.
OK, what about incidents such as the other day in the USA-Slovenia game, when they had a late 'goal' disallowed? The referee stops play as he perceives a foul. But review shows that no foul occurred. How does play now restart? You can't just award a goal to the attacking team. The referee clearly blew his whistle some time before the ball entered the goal, so in theory the team currently defending could legitimately claim that they played to the whistle and stopped, because by the rules of the game the ball is dead. Maybe a tight call in that incident, but you only need to extend the time frame by a few fractions of a second for it to be completely valid argument from the defending team. All situations would need to be dealt with the same way, you can't say that it was nearly in the net before the whistle went so we'll still award a goal. It either has or hasn't crossed the line before play was stopped. In this particular case it hadn't. And again, how do we fairly restart play in a static way, from what was a dynamic situation, without unfairly changing the momentum of one team or the other. We have eliminated the free kick option, because there wasn't actually a foul, that only leaves us with a drop ball, which is unsatisfactory for the team who were originally thought by the referee to have infringed.
Once you stop and think about it, trying to introduce tv replays to football very quickly becomes more trouble than it's worth. I would agree that at the top level games there should be a mechanism for determining if the ball has entered the goal, ie that the whole of the ball has crossed the whole of the line. That would be a matter of fact, and could be done virtually instantaneously using a system such as Hawkeye to measure this. But nothing else in the game readily lends itself to such review.
The answer is to improve the standard of refereeing, and particularly in this case, the argument is to not to select for the World Cup referees from third world footballing backwaters for purely political reasons, referees who in this country would never make it beyond sunday pub games on Hackney Marshes.
When my father was still an active referee and working his way up through the ranks, one of his peers at semi-professional level was rejected as not good enough for the Football League. The guy later emigrated to Canada, and went straight onto their FIFA list, because although he was comparatively not so good over here in England, only allowed to do semi-professsional games and lower, but not considered competent enough to be entrusted with the responsibility of officiating in professional games, he was pretty much the best referee in Canada, and therefore was suddenly doing international matches.
That simply should not be allowed to happen. FIFA needs to work hard to ensure that all referees are as good as the best, wherever they come from. If that means some countries don't get to have a referee at the World Cup then tough. If that also means that all the referees only come from four or five countries, then that is also tough. It's (supposed to be) the premier football event on the planet, so why do we not have the best people doing the most important job? Until that happens, until FIFA stop being a political organisation trying to be suck up to all the minority countries, and starts being an organisation which works solely for the benefit of football, then players and fans alike will continue to have to put up with rubbish decisions.
By all means FIFA should try to improve skills and participation in poorer countries. By all means give them money for equipment and facilities. By all means invest in training and education for officials. But don't let them officiate until they have referees and linesmen worthy of the title. Instead, aspiring individuals from poorer countries should have to work their way up through the various levels just like those from the big European countries do, maybe working with UEFA to get a program going for them to work up through the various European semi-pro and professional leagues.
But sadly, we all know that FIFA isn't interested in making football better.
Apologies for the essay.