Technology Is There For Using

Our hearts go out to the millions of English fans who had to witness their Three Lions mauled by a band of marauding Germans. The embarrassing 4-1 defeat to Germany knocked them out of World Cup 2010 at the second hurdle, ending another disappointing campaign.

Unlike other campaigns, however, English fans are not plagued by the ghosts of missed penalties or plain tough luck. Instead, they are plagued by a very painful what-if: What if Frank Lampard’s equalising goal in the 38^th minute had been allowed to stand? Video replays proved that the ball crossed the line before bouncing back into play, but the referee did not have a good enough view to call the goal.

At 2-2, things might have turned out differently. Had England not been chasing the goal that wasn’t, they might not have been exposed to the counter-attack that led to Germany’s third goal.

So let us lend our voices to the millions calling for goal-line technology, already used in a myriad of sports to be implemented, especially in football’s biggest tournament.

The funny thing is –  – the International Football Association Board (IFAB) called for a meeting of its members (namely, FIFA, and the football associations of England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland) in March this year to discuss the implementation of such technology. FIFA used their 4 votes to vote against, along with Wales and Northern Ireland, triumphing over the English and Scottish pro-technology vote.

All sorts of excuses were given by FIFA for their anti-technology stance. Costs, they say, when football is known to be one of the most lucrative sports – companies would line up to sponsor the technology, and to be known as the patron of fairer football. It interrupts the flow of the game, they say, when such technology is already used smoothly in rugby, cricket and tennis.

Fans like to debate over the game, they say, but they would rather have a fair game and debate over more delightful aspects of the game, such as how Ronaldinho actually pulls off all those moves, as compared to say, what would happen if a referee had technology to make up for his human deficiencies.

Ultimately, it is difficult to have goal-line technology in football if its biggest chief, FIFA President Sepp Blatter, gives his own narrow-minded excuse against it. “Science is coming in the game, no discussions, we don’t want that. We want to have these emotions, and then a little bit more than emotions, passion.”

Perhaps Mr Blatter wants us to wail like babies everytime a goal is conceded, but the ridiculously obvious truth is that goal-line technology does not have the power to turn us into robots with no feelings. A bureaucracy that offers poorly-researched, asininely generic excuses for not bringing progressive developments to the game, on the other hand, might suck the passion out of the game.

Technology would have been really helpful when…
3 painful instances of human error in the World Cup

1. England v West Germany, 1966 World Cup Final

Some German fans would point out that Lampard’s disallowed goal is karmic retribution for the 1966 World Cup final, when Geoff Hurst’s similar extra time goal was allowed to stand even though it did not cross the line after bouncing off the underside of the bar. And mind you, this was the final, so the faulty refereeing was even harder to stomach.

2. South Korea v Italy, 2002 World Cup Quarter Finals.

The match had ended 1-1, and it was on to sudden death extra time. Ecuadorian referee made himself the most hated person in Italy with two very controversial decisions. First, he ruled out a goal by Damiano Tomassi for offside, when video replays were not needed to show that the Italian midfielder was onside. Then, he sent Italian talisman Francesco Totti for diving when video replays showed that the South Korean defender did make contact with his lower body.

3. England v Argentina, 1986 World Cup Quarter-Finals

The vertically-challenged Maradona somehow rises high enough to put an aerial ball very much out of his limited reach past the much taller Peter Shilton. The referee incredibly fails to see this, and Argentina go on to beat England 2-1. Maradona later claimed it was the ‘Hand of God’, topping ‘my dog ate my homework’ on the list of most ridiculous lies ever invented.