There has been much scrutiny about officiating crews getting crucial decisions wrong at the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and how those calls have cost a host of countries a chance to still be involved in the competition, but at least they did not cost them a Barclays Premier League title.
Playing the dangerous game of "What If" is never something anyone should ever do, but most Manchester United fans still feel cheated to what transpired in two matches cannot be overlooked.
Pundits will say that they were a lot of reasons as to why United did not win an unprecedented fourth league title in a row last season, but there were two incorrect decisions that led to the title ending up with Chelsea.
However, those critics cannot deny those certain situations would have been rectified rectified if there was some sort of way to challenge those decisive calls using technology or video footage.
When you add the fact that the majority of them are England supporters, so the sour taste of how they feel cheated that Frank Lampard's legitimate goal did not count against Germany is still lingering in their mouth.
Cheated
In November, and the first time these two sides met in the league, United cruelly lost 1-0 at Stamford Bridge on a controversial goal that should have never stood.
First, and completely against the run of play, Chelsea's Ashley Cole conned Martin Atkinson into believing he was fouled by Darren Fletcher, but as the replays clearly showed the United midfielder won the ball fairly. According to the letter of the law, Cole should have been booked for deceiving the referee.
From the ensuing free-kick, Chelsea registered the game's only goal when John Terry, but there were two fouls committed by Didier Drogba, which should have nullified the goal. The first one was a blatant push on Wes Brown, but the most obvious non-call was his active involvement from an offsides position following Terry's header.
Neither infraction earned a whistle from Atkinson and Chelsea went onto steal all three points.
The next time these two sides met was with only five matches to go, and with United only holding a slender two point advantage in the title race, the winner would have the decisive edge in the run-in.
Going in to this title-tilting match, United were well below their glittering best, and fell behind 1-0 20 minutes when Joe Cole's cheeky back heel found its way into the net.
However, United came out in the second-half as a completely different side and they were looking to level the scores, but they were hit by a Chelsea counterattack and Drogba slammed the ball passed Edwin van der Sar at the near post.
But hold the horses, because the Chelsea hitman was more than a yard offside when he received Salomon Kalou's pass, and the linesman with an unobstructed view, failed to raise his flag.
To their credit, United battled to pull a goal back through young Federico Macheda, but the result, as well as the momentum in the title race, had already swung Chelsea's way.
Change
Modern day players are much faster and play a lot closer to the second-to-last defender than they did before, so it makes it much harder on the referee and his assistants to get every single call right.
Football is not like any other sport, because there are not many stoppages, so most calls cannot be looked at or over turned, so FIFA, UEFA and the FA need to address how and when to use video technology.
Hockey has a great solution to their problem by sticking a "Goal Line Judge" behind the goal, and if he thinks that a goal has been scored he presses a button to light up a red lamp. If that goal is in question the referee and his linesmen go look at the video replay to make sure that the goal was legitimate.
Football can learn a lot by hockey, and contrary to what Sepp Blatter, the President of FIFA, says, it will not be that costly to implement, because there should already be a control panel watching each and every match live to avoid controversy.
The cost would just be the implementation of the technology, because the research has already been done by some of the world's most technological-advanced companies.
What Blatter fails to recognize is what is costly is the amount of money that a club or country is denied if they do not win or advance in a competition.
Going forward, and with great hope, Sepp Blatter and his fellow associates at FIFA should hide their pride and their fear of change to introduce goal line technology to help get these game-changing decisions correct, so we minimize the costly errors in all matches.
No comments:
Post a Comment