Who Needs Technology? We Have Referees!

My regular readers - all three of them - will know that I have been highly critical of the referees in the 2010 World Cup. Obviously the USA goals that were absurdly disallowed have been my main gripe, but you could point to any number of bad penalty decisions (in the USA's favor vs. Ghana), insane red cards (Cahill, Klose), and botched offside calls (2 Higuain goals vs. South Korea).

Today really took the cake though. First, there was the England pseudo-equalizer from Frank Lampard that was a good yard over the line but was not given. Everyone, from Capello to the commentator to me could see it was over the line. There's no doubt that Germany totally outclassed England, but the difference between 2-1 and 2-2 is night and day. If the goal is given then it really demoralizes the Germans, having pissed away the lead so quickly. Instead, England are left bewildered and infuriated and still a goal behind, which is always going to leave them vulnerable to a third (and fourth). Germany deserved the win, but in football, as Clint Eastwood said in Unforgiven, "Deserve's got nothing to do with it."

If you think that this glaring error would serve as a warning to the linesman in the later match between Argentina and Mexico, you obviously lack the sheer self-righteous arrogance necessary to be a FIFA referee. Carlos Tevez score his first goal from an absurdly offside position. For those not familiar with the offside law, at the time the ball is passed to the scorer, there must be two defenders (one usually being the keeper) between the goal and the scorer. Tevez was so offside that there were ZERO defenders between him and the goal. It was a laughably bad decision. Again, Argentina were much better than Mexico, but at 0-0 anything can happen, and the Mexicans completely lost their composure after being robbed.

I understand the objections to video and/or goal-line technology. It slows down the pace of the game and can't be applied evenly throughout all levels of professional football. If FIFA is dead-set against it though, then they need to institute harsh measures to punish referees who fail. In this way, we can either weed out the bad referees, or we'll force them to agree that technological help is the only way to save their jobs.