Posted on 06/28/2010 5:26:59 AM PDT by mattstat
Hold the line, Sepp. Don’t buckle under the pressure, which now is intense and hot, but soon will be slack and not even tepid. We do not need to let replay “technology”—the word that everybody now favors—into the beautiful game.
Yes, the referees missed awarding a lackluster England a goal against Germany. We know this because the replay—in this case—was clear. It isn’t always clear, of course. But here, we could see it and we know that, at least in the eyes of many Germans, a weird sort of justice was done.
Justice? Consider: in the Cup final in 1966, England’s Geoff Hurst shot and hit the (West) German crossbar. The ball bounced. Over the line, claimed the English. Before the line, said the Germans. The referees agreed with England, who went on to win 4-2.
So, because of Sunday, in the minds of many German fans anyway, the score is now even: one bad goal equals another.
Fabio Capello Weeps Once More Did Sunday’s un-awarded goal change the outcome? Fabio Capello assumed the counterfactual: had Lampard’s goal counted, England, he said, could have at least drawn. But many viewers, and less passionate assessors, took the opposite view: England did not play well over four games and were on their way home no matter what. To prove their point, we may merely say, “Wayne Rooney?”
Ah, but even if you buy that, we must still account for the missed offsides call against Argentina...
(Excerpt) Read more at wmbriggs.com ...
Yes. It did. It got the calls right and did not let the outcome be determined by human error.
It slowed down the game and made it nearly unwatchable.
I think the idea is to “punish” the player’s team by making them play a man down. In this case, however, the Belgian ref (who called a decent match, btw) let him right back on in less than a minute. So Ghana wasn’t “punished” at all.
No demonstrations of cultural insensitivity thank you.
Better referees, and stop using affirmative action by continent to pick the referees. If Howard Webb is the best ref, and he happens to ref an England game, so be it.
The problem with replay is that it makes referees even worse, since they figure if they botch the call, video will catch it anyway.
I would allow replay on one condition. There are alternate referees at the game. If video overturns a call from the ref on the field, the ref is tossed from the game and the tournament and the alternate ref comes in.
To you perhaps. The challenges are limited by design. I would still rather take the time and get the calls right than deal with the subjective/human mistakes in soccer. As I admitted, I don’t watch much but what I have seen has been very poor officiating dictating the outcome of a number of games in the biggest event in the world. That should be unacceptable.
That's a good bet.
It's fine and dandy to hope for accuracy. Those poor NFL refs--they just want to know where to spot the ball, and the networks are using it to sell Cialis.
Professor Briggs suffers the fate of Paul McCartney. Not very well reasoned, professor.
I see no problem with having something akin to the technology used in hockey that sets off the siren or the eagle-eye in tennis. The game wouldn’t even have to be slowed down. The technology would instantly tell the ref.
I oppose replays for other events such as fouls or offside because they’d slow things down but for something as important and simple as figuring out whether or not the ball crossed the line I see no reason not to. It wouldn’t affect the pace of play at all.
Football is already a painfully slow game. The replay made it slower. For a three to four hour game you see maybe six or seven minutes of action in pro football. Thats the big reason that it hasn’t caught on anywhere else in the world.
One nice thing about soccer or rugby is that the game doesn’t stop and it doesn’t’ have commercial breaks. Replays for anything outside of goals would make it disjointed and slow things down a lot.
“I would allow replay on one condition. There are alternate referees at the game. If video overturns a call from the ref on the field, the ref is tossed from the game and the tournament and the alternate ref comes in.”
That is a bad idea. It is impossible to get everything right at game speed without the benefit of replay. Even the best refs/umps/officials miss multiple calls a game. If a ref demonstrates a real pattern of that then he should lose his job but you can’t go yanking someone everytime they miss something. You’d need a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eight, ninth, and tenth officiating crew were you to try that.
Ok, I admit the idea needs some tweaking. But there has to be immediate consequences for blown calls. And with replay, it would get even worse, and you would have endless reviews, so that I don’t think is the answer.
Better referees is the only answer, in the end.
Don't want replay technology? Add two end-line officials responsible strictly for goals and corner/GK calls. Especially in major tournaments, a la the MLB baseball playoffs where they use foul line umps in the outfield.
(Besides, you can always give them some snazzy uniforms ;) 
Well, the USA was doing the same thing the Brits were doing during the first 9 months of WWII (commonly called the “phoney war”) - increasing war production and preparing for the conflict.
Otherwise, the US supported Great Britian via war materials until declaring war immediately after being attacked at Pearl Harbor. Seems reasonable to me... :)
Fletcher J
A computer chip and a transmitter inside the ball has been tested and will be implemented sooner or later. Hey, if they can do that with shopping carts they can Shirley do it with futbol!
99.9% of NFL games conclude at around 3 hours and that includes a 20 minute halftime and replay’s. I’d rather watch 11+ minutes of full blown action and plenty of scoring that watching for 90 minutes praying for something other than a 0-0 tie.
Yes, soccer doesn’t “stop” but there is a ton of waiting around time setting up free kicks, etc.
And I agreed about replay other than goals in an earlier post. But you simply have to get the goals right. That blown call against England is akin to an NFL receiver in the 2nd round of the playoffs catching a ball wide open in the end-zone and the refs missing it. Unacceptable.
Interesting... Things such as goals (or touchdowns) are binary. They either are or they aren't. "Hoping" for anything less than accuracy is reducing the value to being almost meaningless.
Instant replay has made NFL football nearly unwatchable. That's just my opinion. The only reason I still watch it is because my bar has a make-your-own Bloody Mary special on NFL Sundays, and there's a fun group of folks making sidebets on all sorts of stupid stuff.
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