FIFA needs technology upgrade

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/11/2009 (6175 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

‘MY game is fair play.” It’s the familiar and overexposed slogan of FIFA, the international body that governs world soccer. It’s also a motto that was trampled into the ground, stomped on and squashed under heel this week as players and fans did their very best to bring themselves and the game into disrepute.

There was the American college player who punched, pulled hair and ran roughshod over everything in her path. There were the Egyptian fans who were intimidated by the knives, swords and flares of their Algerian counterparts. There was the stoning of the Algerian team bus by those same Egyptian supporters — a fitting bit of vengeance in a week that has done so much to disgrace the sport.

But nothing took the headlines so much as Thierry Henry’s handball against the Republic of Ireland. I don’t need to describe it. You’ve seen it dozens of times already. Open any newspaper, turn on any 24-hour news channel, and there it is.

Sports ethicists have come down hard on Henry, claiming the French captain should have immediately admitted to cheating. I didn’t know there was such a thing as sports ethicists. Nor did I know there was a Centre for Ethical Theory and Honour in Competition and Sport. But there is, and they’ve been burning Henry in effigy as well. What a bunch of tosh.

Yes, Henry cheated. He palmed the ball to his foot and set up the winning goal of a crucial World Cup qualifier. He admitted it, and has called for the match to be replayed. Henry is not culpable here. He’s merely the most convenient goat. The referee who missed the handball — and the double off-side leading up to it — is not at fault, either. Sure, he and his linesmen might have been in better positions, but that’s a rather easy excuse to make.

No, the blame for the botched call goes right to the very top — to the dinosaurs who run the sport from their offices in Zurich and Nyon and wax ecstatic about the evils of video replay technology and the purity of the human element. FIFA president Sepp Blatter is foremost among them.

He is vehemently opposed to video replay, having once said that while he remains in his position, there will be no chance for the introduction of the technology. If that’s the case, he can get used to soccer being dragged through the mud, as it has over the past few days.

Blatter’s is a small-minded point of view. He bases his philosophy on the assumption that making replays available to match officials would slow down the game, somehow impeding on the natural, continual pace that it soccer’s hallmark. He must not have been watching on Wednesday.

Before referee Martin Hansson had managed to shake off the furious Irish players and confer with his assistants, the goal had been replayed and millions of viewers had witnessed the very obvious handball.

It took a matter of seconds. Had FIFA positioned a fifth official in the press gallery with access to TV monitors, the correct information might have been immediately relayed to Hansson’s headset. It could have been as simple as that.

But FIFA’s persistent refusal to give their officials the tools to do their jobs turned a potentially minor incident into an international boondoggle. They are fully to blame, and they should be pressured by their member associations to introduce video replay before the World Cup.

Henry, meanwhile, should be cut some slack. He’s not a cheat; he’s not a trickster. He’s a human being who bent the rules. Anyone who has ever left work 10 minutes early or driven above the speed limit can identify.

But FIFA’s reluctance to adopt readily available and competent technology needs to be re-evaluated. It’s like telling a police officer to catch speeders without giving him a radar gun.

jerradpeters@gmail.com

Matches to watch

 

Liverpool vs. Manchester City: today, 6:30 a.m., Setanta.

Manchester United vs. Everton: today, 11:15 a.m., Setanta.

Los Angeles Galaxy vs. Real Salt Lake: Sunday, 7:30 p.m., GolTV.