Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Harper and poor officiating. . . . .

This story makes me laugh - So apparently the other day there were two terrible calls at the World Cup. England got a goal against Germany that didn't count because the refs didn't actually see it go in and Argentina got a goal that counted even though it was clearly off-side. Besides the fact that this World Cup has been plagued by fairly atrocious officiating all along FIFA has refused to use instant replay because they say it would interupt the flow of the game. For the case of many calls such as yellow cards etc, this is fair enough because there is certain degree of subjectivity to such calls anyway. But regarding goals instant replay would be a pretty simple way to check for line-crossing, hand-goals, off-side etc. Many commentators are now apparently calling for the use of instant replay, particularly after the number of terrible calls that have been made in the past two weeks.  The embarrassing problem for FIFA is that with all the technology that exists today the people in the stands can watch the replay from several different angles right after the play so they know if the refs made a bad call or not. 

FIFA's answer to all these problems? They will no longer allow instant replay in the stadium of controversial goals, so that their officials won't be embarrassed by their poor officiating. That's  hilarious. Apparently FIFA is taking advice from Stephen Harper; don't deal with the problem by dealing with the problem, deal with it by  trying to hide it from your viewers. 

1 comment:

Alexander Raymond said...

I have to admit, I was a bit interested on how you were going to connect FIFA officiating with Harper. Now it makes perfect sense. Thanks.
Great post.