I never played soccer growing up and am very much a mainstream US sports fan. Football (the American sort) ranks as my favorite sport far and away, then hoops (particularly college), then I kind of go random and enjoy stuff like soccer and golf and cycling. Anyway, while I don't see myself as an expert on soccer, I do care enough to read these boards and try not to miss any US national team matches on tv. Here are two things I took away from watching the World Cup (US matches and probably like 4 or 5 others in the group stages, then all the quarters so far): 1. The US actually plays a pretty attractive style of soccer and makes its' games generally fun to watch. We create quite a few good chances, but our finishing of those good chances seems to be sub-par (nothing you don't already know). Basically, I'm just saying that even for a non-soccer guy, the US team played in a way that was enjoyable and exciting to watch. 2. This sport, even at the highest level, will always be looked down upon in the US if they don't fix the horrible officiating errors. As an American sports fan, it disgusts me to watch these games (even when it's not the US playing) where huge goal-scoring decisions are obviously wrong. I don't think you should use technology to challenge judgement calls (fouls and the like), but in a sport where goals are so rare and each one completely changes how the game is played once it counts or doesn't, it is just ridiculous to get the decisions wrong when it would be so easy to get them right. How easy would it be to use the goal line technology that everyone says already exists? How easy would it be to have a replay official who could right a missed offside call? I watched two perfectly good US goals get erased (one probably wouldn't have been reversible, but it is just sick to watch this crap officiating). Then today, in the freakin' quarterfinals of the biggest tournament in the world, I have to watch two terrible calls change the games completely. I didn't even want England or Mexico to win, but those calls ruined those two games for me. As someone from the outside, I have become extremely disenchanted with this tournament right now, despite really enjoying the amazing things the players are able to do on the field. In fact, I doubt I will watch more than another game or two, because the whole thing feels incredibly unjust and I just find it to be so stupid for a sport to choose to be backwards and incorrect when it would be incredibly simple to get it right.
Eventually, every soccer fan has to come to terms with the horrific freak show that is FIFA. They wield absolute power over this sport, they answer to no one, and they are the most blatantly corrupt human beings on the planet. I hope you, like me, can love the sport in spite of those who run it. I must warn you that when you dig a little deeper, FIFA's reluctance to embrace technology ranks about #13,543,896 on the things they've screwed up/corrupted. The refs have an insanely difficult job. The sport at this level moves lightning fast, and it is sometimes beyond the abilities of three people to follow it all. Despite all this, don't get your hopes up about goal line technology or a video referee.
That's the real problem. The linesmen in today's game was in exactly the best spot he could be in both games and missed both calls. But its hard to blame them for it, the game moves so fast...
I don't really disagree with any of this. The cup/tournament format is particularly vulnerable to having the course of events changed by a single bad call. League play can wait, as things do tend to balance themselves out in league play, but whether it's the World Cup, the Euros, the Champions League, or the MLS play-offs, tournaments need to do a lot more with technology so that the referee stops being the story.
Games would be a hell of a lot harder to fix with replay and goal-line technology. So no, I don't think we'll see them anytime soon.
this was claimed by the guy running against Sepp Blatter and Blatter took him to court. A trial was held and there is no evidence whatsoever that FIFA or Blatter are in any way corrupt. It is bad to make those allegations when there is no evidence. The guy making those claims got a huge fine from the court. I don't like the decisions they make, but can you cite ANYTHING at all that indicates that they are corrupt? If not, please don't repeat that.
Bud Selig is a progressive radical compared to FIFA....replay is begging to happen but they won't let it happen. My only feeling is that with the emotion this game can have over whole countries, that they feel better having human error mistakes than admitting they are wrong. Another thing that needs to happen is stopping the clock when the Ghana guys are rolling around on the ground.
Spoiler alert, results referred to below: Welcome aboard, I was in your shoes almost 20 years ago now. Never played the game, the first soccer games I ever saw were at the 1994 World Cup. It's like my first baseball game was an MLB playoff game. Officiating soccer at the highest levels is incredibly difficult. Offsides is very hard to call, because the strikers time the line as close as they can, and their wicked fast. Just as an example, go back and watch the Mexico/Argentina goal full speed, it's a lot closer than it looks in freeze frame. I thought the ESPN people were intentionally winding up the casual fans with the emphasis on blown calls. They probably know that sells in America. The Mali ref call was totally mysterious, and really unusual in that it's impossible to tell what he thought he saw (or even plausibly make something up after the fact). However, the blown offsides call in the Algeria game is actually pretty typical, if in doubt, the flag goes up. I know that's not the rule and the directives from on high say there must be daylight showing, etc. etc. but that's not how that call is made. If you watch a lot of games, you'll see that kind of call a lot. In fact, that makes the Mexico/Argentina call more galling, usually if it's that close they call it off. I don't know how well the chip in the ball technology works. The TV guys just assert that it's wonderful, but I've never heard of it being tested (certainly not in anything like a WC). It seems using that or some kind of "goal ref" like they do in hockey would be the most likely change FIFA would make, at least for big FIFA and federation tournaments. That would cure most calls like in the Eng/Ger game, where both the linesman and ref are in bad positions to make the call even when they are where they are supposed to be. However, sometimes even the camera can't tell if the ball is in the net. If I remember right, there was one like that cleared in the Serbia game. There's a big picture issue that seems to get missed. Soccer is an endurance sport, and it's up to the players to play the game. It's not like football where you go real hard for 8 seconds, then get 30 seconds rest (and sit out half the game). You don't have committee meetings like in basketball where the coach directs everything, or can stop the game if the players tire. You don't get to say, I'm tired, give me a break. If you start breaking up the game for replays, consultations, reviews, and appeals, you change the nature of the sport into something it is not, because players will get rest that they would not otherwise have. The price of that is that justice will not always be perfect. Lastly, even applying NFL type rules, you could not fix all these bad calls. The Slovenia call would have stood under NFL rules, because the ref blew the whistle at the start of the play. That's like blowing the whistle on a questionable fumble, the ball is dead at the time of the whistle and it doesn't matter who recovers. You could disallow the first goal in the Argentina game, and you would count England's goal. I've also seen NFL games where calls get reversed that are not clearly correct, and the reversal looks wrong (Oakland v. New England, playoffs in the snow). So, what I do is I enjoy that I don't have to watch ads or look at guys under a blanket looking at a TV set. I'm a lawyer, so appellate review seems more like work than entertainment, so I'm willing to live with a bad call or two so that I can enjoy the speedy game without interruption. Rant completed.
You hope that FIFA will eventually get to the goal-line technology for balls that land over the line. That is simple, it is easy and it can be quick. Like the NFL - unless there is incontrovertible evidence, the call on the field sticks. Unlike the NFL do not give the coaches any say in the matter. FIFA should be embarrassed about how France got into the World Cup and the number of just eggregious calls in the World Cup.
Here's where the NFL has it right. If you go down hurt and they have to top the clock, you have to go out. If the refs had a practice of making a player go out and stay out for a while, it would stop this kind of fakery dead in its tracks. You would not want to play short when protecting a lead. Players would only go down in that situation when truly injured. Refs are supposed to add time in injury time for this kind of thing, but it's my understanding they rarely add enough to make up for the time wasting. (I've never actually sat there with a stop watch to figure it out). Therefore, time wasting works.
Chipped balls (for detecting goals) was tried by FIFA recently in a youth tournament (I forget which one) - but the result was not up to par. But hopefully a better implementation of it can be created and tested soon. I'm personally in favor of a 5th referee who watches the video feed, who could be in radio contact with the other referees. As for FIFA being corrupt, yes it is. But they are not actively out to "destroy football/soccer". They live on the sport. They are just very conservative against changes, and do not want to change the sport more than absolutely necessary. That's why you'll never see time stoppage. Yes, it is frustrating at times, but the sport has been fine with it for over 100 years. (And The IOC makes FIFA look honest in comparison. )
This to me is a weak argument. The time lost to a video review and overturn of a goal (or granting of one) is negligible compared to the total time of the game. Furthermore teams already intentionally slow the game down by faking injuries and other time-wasting tactics, so soccer in the "no breaks no interruptions" ideal you describe doesn't exist anyway. What tiny bit of game flow you would lose by implementing replay in disputed-goal situations would be far outvalued by getting calls like that right. The fact that video review wouldn't fix all hypothetical bad calls doesn't mean it can't fix some of them, and the fact that it can't fix all of them isn't a convincing argument against it. It could have fixed the two bad ones today. And while it's true that occasionally you get bizarre tuck-rule-like outcomes from video review, they're very rare. The NFL averages more than a challenge a game, and that happened in ONE game years and years ago. It's the exception, not the rule.
were you able to type that with a straight face? for evidence you should be familiar with, are you not including jack warner as part of fifa? i know he's only 2nd in charge, but come on.
Whoa how did I miss this. Saying there's "no evidence" is absurd. The hilariously, depressingly open corruption of Jack Warner has been well documented on this very website. As for evidence against Blatter, it's all over and easy to find. The one place with the most is probably Andrew Jenning's site. Which is indeed sensationalistic, but if you want evidence it's there to be seen. Here's one of the more (IMO) funny (in a sad way) recent examples: http://www.transparencyinsport.org/greene.html
I'm with you on goal line decisions (i.e. did the ball cross the line). That is especially true if they get the chip ball to work, or hire the guy who flips the light on for hockey goals. But if every close offsides call, trip, push or pull is subject to review the game comes to a grinding halt repeatedly. And that's not soccer as we know it. That "get on with it" mentality is deep in soccer culture, and will not change. Also, extended goal line review opens the door to review of other important calls. Should we review throw ins? Corners? Yellow cards? Red cards? FIFA won't want to fall down that slope. One of the worst calls of this tournament was Kaka's red card. Does Brasil cry about it? No, they go out and get the result they need anyway. They're that good. Part of the game is overcoming the bad breaks that come your way, and I'm very proud of the way the Americans overcame their bad breaks to get as far as they did. Prior USA incarnations would have broken under those circumstances.
It was a yellow first of all. Second of all, why in the world was he putting his elbow up in the Ivory Coast player's chest? I have no problem with his yellow, only with the fact that the Ivory Coast player wasn't reprimanded at all. True... England and Mexico definitely struggled with the bad calls against them. Truthfully though, neither of those teams were good enough to progress today anyway.
http://www.transparencyinsport.org I'll say to the original poster, I'm like you, I used to watch the Premier League and MLS, but I've pretty much devolved into only caring about the national team. I agree on both your points.
I would limit replay technology to goal line decisions and goals allowed/disallowed due to offsides maybe. It's not that slippery a slope, I think you'll find proponents of replay reasonable. If FIFA doesn't want to fall down the slope they don't have to, just limit the circumstances under which replay technology can be used. Or allow yellow/red card decisions to be appealed after the game, so it doesn't interrupt the flow. If that was the case the Kaka situation could have been avoided at no loss to the pace of the game. And the "go out and win anyway" reasoning is also bad IMO. If it's a close game and a poor referee decision robs one side, it's unfair to tell them "you should have found a way to win." They DID find a way to win, and it was taken away from them. In the most recent examples (England and Mexico) they probably would have lost anyway, but relying on fate to spare the blushes of the officials isn't a very attractive strategy. If you're lucky enough to be Brazil, and have such quality as to overcome that sort of thing, then fine, but that's not always the case.
Wow. What are you, a FIFA employee? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-404756/FIFA-chiefs-World-Cup-ticket-scam.html http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2002/0504/breaking28.html How about the white elephants that are going to dot South Africa starting next month? http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/33220/ How about Jack Warner refusing to pay his players, despite his ill-begotten millions? http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/patrick_barclay/article7114516.ece How about Jack Warner forcing an absurd England friendly in Trinidad in exchange for his support for England 2018, ahead of his own region's entrant (the USA)? Or the English FA agreeing to take part in such a blatant cash grab/handy? Lampard, Beckham, Gerrard etc in the ****ing Caribbean for a friendly. Jesus. http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/...glands-trinidad-friendly-in-doubt-831986.html
I think you are correct about ESPN winding everyone up with the emphasis on blown calls. They saw an opportunity to draw more interest (ratings) by over emphasizing blown calls by officials when it conveniently, or I guess you could say unconveniently, happened to the US. Like someone else pointed out mistakes like this happen all the time throughout league play, probably at the rate of at least 5 a day worldwide, but since teams play 30+ games over 9 months they aren't really emphasized since one blown call during a game in September won't be the cause of a teams poor run of form in February. At the World Cup all eyes are on this one competition that happens every four years so mistakes that a frequent and commonplace get magnified. It also does something that ESPN doesn't want and that is turn people off from the sport. The anchors and host continuing to point out that in America "we do it right with replay" will just make the casual fan they are trying to convert be less receptive to doing so. In the end though this isn't any different than what happens during the Olympics with obscure sports like short track speedskating. "How dare the judges disqualify our beloved Ono when he cut of that Korean! I'm gonna tune in later to watch his next race so he can shove his win back in their faces and let the Koreans know who owns the ice!" I get caught up in the hype just like everyone else but it does nothing to attract me to the sport.
I think they're making exactly the sort of deal they should of these mistakes. In some cases they blame the officials, but in many cases blame FIFA and the lack of technology or the lack of reviewing plays like the flop that got Kaka the red card. I think they've been realistic about the mistakes. I think there have been more big mistakes by refs or linesmen. I also think that the game is too fast and its hard to blame these guys in some cases (not the Edu goal though).