They are experimenting with this, but there are 2 major problems.

1) The chip get's destroyed during hard kicks. Many people underestimate the force of a kick and how the ball gets "squished".

2) The ball has to be balanced. A weight on one side is going to make it fly like a drunk UFO.

Good lord. We do not need microchips in a ball.

JUST CHECK THE CAMERA.

Get a damn official in a booth. Ball goes in with no call, he calls down and informs the ref "You ****ing FIFA jerkoff. You ****ing suck. Stop play dammit. It's a goal. Go back to Mali."

This is not hard. It is very simple. It is not hard.

Or is it?

It's obvious that there should be the facility for using video replays, at least for line calls, but many countries voted against it. As I understand is, their doubts are that:

1 - once you bring it in for line calls, it increases the chances of it being extended for other calls (eg penalties etc) and if that happens then the games will take 2 days to complete and, probably, the earth will stop spinning on it's axis

2 - people who run football like to think that the rules/playing conditions etc are basically the same at all levels and you'd only have video calls in (some) televised games.

Obviously both arguments are ******ed, but football is run by old farts who don't like any change. I mean, it look the game about a hundred years to change the back-pass law even though it was clearly a beneficial change. When that rule was changed it was something like 50:50 for:against amongst pundits etc, though nobody would want to go back to the old rule now. There were comments like "it's a great game, so why change it?". The answer "well, to make it better you ****ing dimwitt" didn't seem to hit them.

/debate based on logic.

xpost from another thread.

FIFA cracks down on stadium video after replays fuel Argentina-Mexico row

Just because you can't fix everything doesn't mean you shouldn't fix what you can.

just give all the refs ipads and coaches can get calls reviewed.

personally I think FIFA's right. controversial calls = higher ratings and free press

The "free press" might be something to mention in the qualifiers where few people watch. But a Germany-England game in the World Cup requires no such incentives.
You also fail to see how it can hurt the game. I have introduced some people to soccer during this World Cup. At first they were into it, but as the referee errors kept piling up, they kept losing interest in an unfair sport.

Its really a huge turnoff for potential new fans. The world cup even makes the nba look like it isnt rigged.

I just went through the rules regarding the obligations of the ref. There is no rule prohibiting him from looking at technology. Therefore, they could have looked up into replays in both games specially the Argentina-Mexico match, where it seems the linesman saw the replay and was visually very nervous about deciding what to do. I was enraged at FIFA more than the referees, but now I am extra pissed at the ref.

It's a fifa normative that all monitors have to be hidden from the ref and he can not watch any replays. Same goes for his assistents. They are even encouraged to never look at the stadium-screen replay.

Please, don't start talking BS straight away.

Blatter specifically adressed this after the Italy-France incident, where it was blatant that the 4th ref watched a replay that led to the red card for Zidane, as the ref didn't ( and couldn't, as it was on the opposing side of the pitch ) see it.

Yeah I heard that FIFA typically bans in stadium replays because they don't want to get the crowd worked up.

Seems like a great system they have there. Let's hide the truth from everyone because the truth will really piss them off.

So FIFA can find the time and energy to have someone censoring the bad calls from replay but not actually doing anything of value with them.

Encouraged is not the same as enforced.

I went through the Laws of the Game which can be found in FIFA's website.

I went carefully through it and found not mention of forbidding referees to look at the stadium replays. They in fact make no mention of encouraging it either.

Yep. I was kinda looking at the World Cup as a chance to get into soccer the same way I did hockey over the last 1-2 years (a couple years ago I never watched the sport at all except maybe playoffs, some guys at the job I started in 2008 are hockey fans though so I started watching the Sharks and now I'm hooked, watched every regular season SJ game, almost every playoff game for all teams). I have since discovered that
- flopping is gay
- refereeing quality is absolutely horrible; 2 of the 4 USA games had good goals disallowed, Germany/England and Mexico/Argentina both had god-awful calls yesterday. How can you so consistently screw up the most single most important decision a ref has in the game - whether a goal should count or not?

Both of these are huge turn-offs to even bothering trying to get into soccer. Won't be turning on the MLS or EPL anytime soon. So, I dunno how unique I am, but FIFA sure blew their chance of turning me into a soccer fan.

It's not just you.

+1 for me too.

Of course you've never seen diving in a NHL game, and the refs have never affected the outcome of a Sharks game, right?

Sad thing is FIFA is farther behind than Baseball.

Fifa's own motto is fair play yet England was screwed, Mexico was screwed.

The time it took were the Mexicans were arguing the offside someone could have looked at it.

I also agree the flopping and diving ruins the game. Why cant they view the tapes and if a guy dives fine him or card him. The one guy acted like he was punched in the face flopped and the other guy gets a red.

Officiating is difficult but England got robbed that thing was in by two feet

You don't seriously think either of those things are on remotely the same level in hockey as in soccer, do you?

Part of the problem is that FIFA don't run the MLS or EPL. FIFA exists to A) organize the WC qualification process and the Finals, B) oversee the selection process for the host country, and C) police the "laws of the game", which in real life means policing who is eligible to play for whom. They run the Confed cup and a bunch of minor tournaments, but really they are entirely focused on the WC.

I made the point a while that the one TV event that people will virtually never, ever stop watching is the World Cup. FIFA knows that people will never meaningfully boycott it, and this is why they have done absolutely nothing to reform the game- they can afford to sit there and give BS excuses for not having replay and the like, it has no impact on the WC's success.

OTOH, casual fans will choose to stop watching things like the EPL or Champions League if the reffing is ruining the game. There is a reason why UEFA is the group experimenting with more officials behind each goal, etc, while FIFA can get away with using inexperienced refs like Koulabilally (sp? dont care) in the biggest games of the year.

Say there are 5 million potential new soccer fans in the US who might start watching the EPL after the world cup (made that number up). I seriously doubt FIFA gives a crap if they say "Eff soccer, I gave it a chance during the world cup, but the reffing system is absurd and ruins the game for me." Those fans will still come back in 4 years for the WC. And if FIFA did blow their chance at making you a fan, well... they already have enough already. It's really dumb, but the reason they treat replay and rule changes like idiots is because they can get away with it.

how often in an 82 game hockey season does a clean goal not count or vice versa? possibly once?

Semi unrelated, when people say "Every major sport has video replay for at least goal line decisions, even baseball, which has the biggest faction of purists who don't want technology"- MLB did a lot more than decide to use replay for HR calls, it also introduced Questec to monitor and grade ball/strike decisions, which has had a major impact. A lot of people underestimate how much MLB has allowed technology to improve the game because this is an indirect intervention rather than a direct one, but it has changed the game a lot (for the better).

not definitive imo

There's obviously more diving, but it's importance and frequency tends to be overstated by newer fans. As far as bad calls affecting the outcome of matches, I think this was a bad weekend for that, and not indicative of the norm. But of course calls in this sport (cards, PK's) tend to be more important because of how low scoring it is.

Plus even though the blown calls would have put the two matches at 2-2 and 0-0, strangely I still don't know that the would have affected the outcomes in the end. Both Germany and Argentina seemed to outclass their opponents anyway, and were full value for wins. (though I would totally understand arguments to the contrary)